RustConf 2025 in Review: Rust for the Road Ahead
From September 2-5, 2025, the Rust Foundation brought the Rust community together in Seattle, WA and online at RustConf — four unforgettable days of learning, collaboration, and celebration! Now that the dust has settled and we’ve returned from our September travels, our team is looking back fondly on an energizing, uplifting, and action-packed event.
This year’s conference underscored Rust’s growing role at the heart of modern software. As GeekWire’s Todd Bishop noted in his article covering our event, Rust is “rewriting the rules of modern software”, and RustConf 2025 showed exactly why.
Get a taste of RustConf for yourself (or relive the memories!) in our new highlights reel:
You can also flip through our photo gallery! Here’s a preview:
… and watch full keynote, session, and sponsor talk recordings!
RustConf: a home for the Rust community & its future.
RustConf is proudly hosted by the Rust Foundation, and it represents one of our most important roles: connecting with and serving the global Rust community. We see RustConf as an immersive place where major Rust news gets made and shared, and where end users, maintainers, and ecosystem leaders gather to showcase how Rust is shaping the real world.
This year, we were proud to share two major milestones with the community, both announced at RustConf 2025:
- ARM upgrading its Rust Foundation membership to Platinum — underscoring Rust’s growing role in secure, performance-critical systems and the value of stepping up for open source.
- The launch of the Rust Foundation Innovation Lab — with Rustls as its inaugural project, providing a dedicated space for advancing high-impact ecosystem efforts.
Highlights from RustConf 2025
- Action-packed workshops: Hands-On Workshops: On Tuesday, September 2, we kicked off RustConf with immersive, small-cohort workshops exclusively for in-person attendees. By popular demand, three of the four focused on asynchronous Rust — covering async design patterns, async + C++ interop, and fundamentals of async APIs. The fourth, “Rust at the Edge: AI Development, Edge Deployment, Real-World Inference,” was a smashing success, giving participants hands-on experience with Rust in cutting-edge AI scenarios.
- Opening Remarks: The conference began with powerful opening remarks from Dr. Rebecca Rumbul (CEO & Executive Director of the Rust Foundation), setting the tone for a week of collaboration, learning, and announcements. Watch Rebecca’s opening remarks.
- Keynotes that Shaped the Week
- Mark Russinovich (CTO, Microsoft Azure) shared a forward-looking vision for Rust’s role in the future of cloud computing and secure distributed systems. Watch Mark’s keynote.
- Jonathan Kelley (creator and founder of Dioxus) explored Rust’s potential beyond systems programming, showing how frameworks like Dioxus are tackling the challenges of ergonomics and developer productivity. From linker-based asset bundling to sub-second hot reloading, Jonathan highlighted how high-level Rust can power the future of cross-platform app development. Watch Jonathan’s keynote.
- Nell Shamrell-Harrington (Principal Engineer, Microsoft; Lead Editor, This Week in Rust) reflected on over a decade of This Week in Rust, sharing how the newsletter has documented the community’s growth and fueled its culture of teaching and sharing. She offered a behind-the-scenes look at how the publication comes together and invited everyone to help shape Rust’s story moving forward. Watch Nell’s keynote.
- Nicholas Matsakis (AWS, Rust Language Design Team Co-Lead) and Jack Huey (Rust Project) presented insights from ongoing research into Rust’s adoption and perception. By asking users — and non-users — what they love, what they struggle with, and what Rust is truly best for, they revealed how this data-driven approach can guide the language’s evolution alongside RFCs and project goals. Watch Niko and Jack’s keynote.
- Rust Foundation in the Program
Marco Ieni (Infrastructure Engineer, Rust Foundation) shared how the Rust Infrastructure team has significantly reduced the cost of Rust’s continuous integration (CI). He walked through the challenges faced, the strategies that delivered major savings, and the Foundation’s plan to ensure the CI remains sustainable and maintainable for years to come. Watch Marco’s talk.
- Community Spotlights
Speakers across industries shared real-world Rust stories — from exciting projects developed to combat human trafficking with Rust to Rust and AI. These talks affirmed that Rust is not only academically interesting but increasingly indispensable in the world around us.
- Innovation and Collaboration
True to tradition, RustConf culminated in an unconference day — a place for hallway conversations, whiteboarding, and spontaneous collaboration. It’s this mix of rigor and creativity that makes RustConf unique.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
RustConf 2025 was made possible by the generous support of our sponsors.
- Diamond Sponsor: Solana — our deepest thanks for their leading support and commitment to Rust and its ecosystem.
- Gold Sponsors: Antithesis, Amazon Web Services (AWS — also serving as our Evening Reception Sponsor!) corust.ai, Google, JetBrains, Meta, Microsoft, Mimic, Oracle, Polar Signals, Virtu Financial, Zed Industries.
- Silver: Arm
- Workshops: ai-coustics, Ardan Labs
The support of these generous organizations enabled us to bring together the Rust ecosystem, amplify the work of the community, and ensure Rust continues to thrive.
Save the Date: September 8-11, 2026 | Montreal
We’re excited to announce that RustConf 2026 will take place September 8-11, 2026, in Montreal, Canada. Mark your calendars and join us for another unforgettable gathering of Rustaceans.
You can also register for email updates via our mailing list by clicking here.
Relive RustConf 2025
RustConf continues to be the space where end users, maintainers, and newcomers gather — not just to talk about Rust, but to shape its future. Thank you for being part of this year’s event, and we look forward to seeing you in Montreal in 2026. 🦀
