My review of SeleniumConf 2026 in Valencia

SeleniumConf 2026 - Back in Valencia!

I was already a visitor of some Selenium conferences, e.g. in Berlin, Chicago and last year's Valencia edition. For 2026, the conference yet again returned to Valencia, Spain. Here is my full review.

2026-05-06 - Workshop Day

The first day was all about workshops. I chose "Hands-On with Selenium 5: A Deep Dive into What's Next" by Titus Fortner - a long-time committer to the Selenium project and someone who really knows the codebase inside and out.

The workshop was a full day of code-heavy, hands-on Selenium content. It was great to learn from someone with that level of experience and depth of knowledge. That said, I have to be honest: the content was not as new as I had hoped. The reason is mainly that Selenium 5 is nowhere near being released yet, so the majority of the day was effectively advanced Selenium 4. Still, there were bits and pieces I hadn't been aware of and took notes on, so it was far from wasted time.

Overall it was useful, but worth going in with calibrated expectations.

2026-05-07 - Conference day one

Time for the main event at the beautiful Veles e Vents building! The view from the upper floors were breathtaking but the elevators had a mind of their own...

A warm welcome

Diego Molina, the head organiser, kicked things off with a warm welcome, housekeeping, and a shoutout to the sponsors. Short, efficient, and it set just the right mood for the day.

Keynote: Quantum automation: rethinking Selenium & Appium in the age of AI

The keynote was delivered by Baris Sarialioglu and it was a strong opener. He explored the idea that software under test is increasingly behaving less like deterministic systems and more like quantum environments - unpredictable, context-dependent, and sensitive to observation - and how AI can help stabilise that. Interesting insights, good speaker, and engaging enough that I didn't want to look out the window. A solid start to the day.

Using AI, Statistics, and graph theory to know what to test

Simon Mavi Stewart - one of the co-founders of Selenium, no less - gave what was for me one of the standout talks of the conference.

The core argument was that test results take too long to come back in CI builds, and the best way to fix that is simply to run fewer of them. The interesting and challenging part is figuring out which ones. Simon walked through several approaches to intelligent test selection, including target determination (running each test once, recording which parts of the application it touches, and storing those as lookup tables for future selection) and AI-based methods inspired by research from Meta. His quote "Testing is about risk, not perfection" stuck with me and is one of those things I want to put on a wall somewhere.

There was a lot to take away from this one.

Sponsor booths

I missed the next talk because I got caught up talking to sponsors. With some of them, the conversations went well beyond the usual marketing pitch as I've known a few of these people for years. Sometimes, the hallway track is just as valuable as the stage.

Lunch

Like last year, the food was excellent. Tapas, paella, good drinks. The organisation was noticeably smoother than the previous year too - less of the strategic coordination required to locate a passing waiter. Progress!

Test documentation: why so technical?

Ana Duarte brought a refreshing perspective to the stage. As a technical documentation manager, she made a compelling case that test documentation can and should be both technical and relatable - not just a dry dump of steps, but something that explains the "why" behind the "how".

Her point that "good docs go unnoticed", that technical writing is a kind of silent success, was something that really resonated. Watching her describe how she hunts for information as a technical writer was genuinely interesting and gave me a new appreciation for what good documentation actually takes.

Test architecture that scales: how loadable components empower testing with Selenium

Sargis Sargsyan presented a talk on combining the Loadable Component pattern with the Page Object Model and Domain-Driven Design. The Loadable Component pattern was something I wasn't aware of in Selenium, which made this immediately interesting.

The core problem he addressed is one I know well: as test suites grow, making changes becomes increasingly risky because any change can break a large number of other tests. His proposed solution felt practical and grounded in real experience. Definitely something I want to think about when we have the next refactoring round of our in-house Selenium framework.

When mobile testing hits harder than you expect

Wim Selles delivered one of the most engaging talks of the day. He spoke from experience about just how different mobile testing is from web testing: slow builds, fragile tests, disappearing feedback loops and missing possibilities to quickly roll back or push quick fixes. He also shared what teams can do to regain control.

The talk was put together really well, and the dog pictures on the slides helped. But my favourite signal was watching my colleague Dobrin, who works in mobile testing, nodding his head throughout. That's usually a reliable indicator that someone is hitting the mark.

Testing beyond clicks: a curiosity-driven journey into accessibility testing

For me, this was one of the best talks of the entire conference.

Mirjana Andovska and Petra Prelogovski shared their honest journey into accessibility testing, not as experts, but as empathetic learners figuring it out as they go. They recreated everyday scenarios where voice and motor accessibility matter for everyone, not just those with permanent disabilities.

They also showed actual code demonstrating how to automate voice navigation testing using Selenium tests. Since I've been doing my own work on accessibility over the last few months, I could relate to a lot of what they described, and their approach has already given me ideas to try out.

Evening: Paella at Masusa

I skipped the State of the Union talk at the end of the day because I was quite tired, and after a day in the Selenium 5 workshop I felt I already had a good picture of where things stood. I later found out that my company was mentioned as one of the great examples of Appium adoption. Before the conference, I had sent Jonathan Lipps a tech blog article describing how we built our mobile framework: that must have triggered it.

With my colleagues Giuseppe and Dobrin, we headed back to the Masusa paella bar. We also went there last year, and it did not disappoint. The black paella was as good as ever.

2026-05-08 - Conference day two

Keynote: From QA to quality intelligence - the future of quality, with humans at the core

Sofia Palamarchuk opened the day with what was one of the top talks of the conference. She explored how open-source agentic AI and structured adoption programs can help QA teams move beyond the hype and make AI-driven delivery measurable and human-centred. Her main point that AI adoption is advancing faster than teams' ability to understand, trust, and operationalise it felt very grounded and honest. Rather than adding to the noise, she offered practical steps for doing this responsibly. Very well put together and genuinely inspiring.

My talk: Reinventing the wheel

And then it was my turn!

I gave a talk called "Reinventing the Wheel", sharing nine years of lessons from maintaining Cluecumber, our open source test reporting tool. It was a lot of fun being back on a SeleniumConf stage, the last time was in Chicago in 2023. The audience was great and the reception was warm.

I'll admit I was pretty wired afterwards and skipped the next session to wind down, talk to other speakers and catch up with audience members who had questions.

Mocking client-side and server-side API calls with Selenium BiDi

Vitalii Potapov gave a nicely structured talk using a demo app to demonstrate three approaches to API mocking in Selenium tests: without any mocking, client-side mocking with WebDriver BiDi network interception, and server-side mocking using BiDi together with custom headers.

We already use both mocking approaches in our projects, but not using BiDi, so this is definitely on my "need to try" list.

Lightning talks

I had a personal stake in this session: I had pushed my colleague Giuseppe Donati to sign up for a lightning talk, which meant I absolutely had to be there.

He spoke about his implementation of test failure data analysis and did a great job. The other lightning talks were varied and interesting across the board.

Project members panel

The closing panel with key figures from Selenium and Appium was, as always, one of the highlights of the conference. The audience asked many questions, and the passion from everyone involved was obvious.

It was a little sad, though, to see that even at this conference some people seem to confuse Selenium with a test framework which it is not and never will be. Selenium is a technology for driving the browser and retrieving information from running web applications. A test framework using it has to be built on top of it. This misconception, along with a lot of unfair comparisons that circulate on LinkedIn, does real harm to the project and to the people who pour their time into it. This community deserves much better.

Evening: Pulperia Ligazon

After the conference, we explored the city and ended up at Pulperia Ligazon. The food was simply wonderful. Highly recommended!

2026-05-09 - The rainy day and going home

Saturday was wet. Very wet. We mostly took shelter in the Corte Inglés and the Aqua shopping mall until the afternoon, when the sun finally showed up. That gave us just enough time to wander through downtown Valencia, pick up some souvenirs, and soak up the atmosphere of this city one more time before flying home.

What a great trip.

Conclusion

SeleniumConf 2026 was another fantastic edition. The organisation was excellent, the venue as impressive as ever, the talks inspiring, and the conversations with committers, speakers and fellow industry people invaluable.

Getting back on stage was a personal highlight. But honestly, just being part of this community - the openness, the passion, the genuine willingness to share knowledge - is reason enough to keep coming back.