QGIS 4.0 is out. After years of work by hundreds of volunteers and organisations around the world (migrating to Qt6, reworking the codebase, shipping over 100 new features on top) we have a platform that will serve the community for the next decade. That’s worth celebrating.

It’s also a good moment to be honest about what it takes to keep a project like this healthy, and to ask for your help.

Where we are

QGIS is built by a broad ecosystem of contributors: individual volunteers, companies contributing developer hours, and everything in between. That mix of people and organisations who care about open-source geospatial software is what makes QGIS what it is, and it’s something we’re proud of.

What sustaining memberships fund is the layer of support that makes all that volunteer and contributed work more effective: reliable infrastructure, funded bug fixing rounds, documentation writers, and a small number of specialist tasks that are hard to get done consistently on volunteer time alone.

Our goal

Our annual membership income has grown to €320,000, but our 2026 budget requires €634,000 in expenses. To cover that sustainably we need to grow sustaining memberships by at least €100,000 per year. If your organisation uses QGIS, now is the time to join.

This is what your support makes possible.

A secretary for our volunteer PSC

The PSC runs on contributed time. Over the years the administrative workload around membership, correspondence, procurement, and coordination has grown to the point where it regularly crowds out the work that actually needs experienced people. A part-time funded secretary (€30,000, a first in the project’s history) means PSC volunteers can focus on what only they can do.

More pull request review capacity

The volume of contributions to QGIS has outgrown what volunteers can review promptly. We’ve grown the PR review budget from €30,000 to €40,000, but demand still outpaces funding. Faster reviews mean better code quality and a healthier contributor community. We would like to increase this budget even more.

Security

Security expectations for software used in government, enterprise, and critical infrastructure are rising fast. The EU Cyber Resilience Act and similar regulations are making this concrete for open source projects. QGIS needs to meet that bar: documented processes, vulnerability handling, compliance support, and ongoing code hardening.
We’ve doubled our security budget to €10,000 this year. Security work touches packaging, infrastructure, the plugin ecosystem, and how we respond to disclosures. Growing this budget is a priority and directly benefits every organisation that needs to justify QGIS to an IT or procurement team.

Bug fixing for the 4.x era

Each bug fixing round now costs €55,000, up from €40,000 in the 3.x era. Three rounds per year, €165,000 total. This is what keeps every release stable for the half million daily users who depend on it.

A larger grants programme

The grants programme funds community-driven improvements voted on by the community. It’s been flat at €40,000 for years despite the project growing. Growing it is a direct priority for this campaign.

How to join

We’re looking for:

• 1-2 new flagship members (€27,000+, for larger organisations and federal bodies)
• 5 new large members (€9,000+, for larger cities, provinces, or companies up to 100 employees)
• 10 new medium members (€3,000+, for universities, medium-sized cities, or companies up to 50 employees)
• 20 new small members (€500+, for smaller cities or companies up to 10 employees)

Memberships run for one year and can be renewed automatically. To get started, write to our treasurer at [email protected] or visit the membership page.

Need to convince your manager?

QGIS.org is a Swiss non-profit with external auditing, published financial reports, and transparent governance. A sustaining membership is an investment in critical geospatial infrastructure that your organisation already relies on.

Financial reports · Annual reports · Membership details

Illustration by Muhammad Afandi on Unsplash