WordCamp Europe 2027 in Malaga: how a flagship WordCamp budget works

For the third year running I am co-organising WordCamp Europe: in Basel in 2025, in Kraków in 2026, and now on the Budget Team for WCEU 2027 in Malaga, 27-29 May 2027. This post expands my LinkedIn update with the two things people asked about most: how the money of a flagship WordCamp moves through the WordCamp.org tools, and how to join the community that does all of this.

I give no amounts and no internal team details here. Everything I describe comes from the public organiser handbook, the public WordCamp.org code and my own published words.

#What does the WCEU 2027 Budget Team do?

On LinkedIn I described the team’s work like this: “It’s the part of the event almost nobody sees, yet nothing happens without it. Quotes, contracts, and invoices all pass through us before an idea becomes real.” (Mariusz Szatkowski on LinkedIn).

The bar is high. The official WCEU 2026 recap on WordPress.org reports that Kraków brought 2458 ticket holders from 81 countries to the ICE Kraków Congress Centre, and almost one in four was attending WordCamp Europe for the first time. The programme had 49 talks and eight workshops. That is why, in the same post, I wrote that our goal is to “keep that standard, and ideally raise it” (Mariusz Szatkowski on LinkedIn).

The WCEU 2027 Budget Team according to the organisers page:

Some of us know how the WCEU budget behaves from past editions, while others look at it with fresh eyes and question every assumption. The mix works well. I wrote up my first two years in I am on the WordCamp Europe 2025 organising team (Budget Team), together with the general rules of a WordCamp budget. Here I go one step further, into the tools themselves.

#Who handles the money behind WordCamps?

The financial and legal home of official WordCamps is WordPress Community Support PBC (WPCS). The handbook page on the entity structure describes the setup:

• WPCS is a public benefit corporation whose sole shareholder (100%) is the WordPress Foundation,
• WPCS pays income tax like an ordinary company, while the Foundation is a non-profit,
• all WordCamp financial activity runs through WPCS, not through the Foundation.

On LinkedIn I wrote that we are working with WordPress Foundation finance and other flagship WordCamps on a shared way to track budgets, “so every euro is easier to follow” (Mariusz Szatkowski on LinkedIn). Formally, WordCamp money sits in the Foundation’s subsidiary, WPCS.

The page on running the money through WPCS calls WordCamp Central the accounts receivable and accounts payable department of every WordCamp. Each team keeps its budget in its own site dashboard, under Budget > Budget. Once a program supporter approves the budget, the team does not have to raise a set amount first before paying a venue deposit or other upfront costs. Surpluses stay with WPCS to support other community events.

#How does the WordCamp.org budget tool work?

A WordCamp budget is an object with three versions and three statuses. I am describing it from the file wordcamp-payments/includes/budget-tool.php in the public WordCamp.org repository, on the production branch as of October 2026.

1. The preliminary version (prelim) with the status draft. The team edits it and can ask WordCamp Central for a review without submitting it for approval.
2. Submitting for approval changes the status to pending and sends an email to [email protected] with a link to the budget.
3. Rejection returns it to draft. Approval sets approved, records who approved it, and copies the preliminary version into two places: the approved version (approved) and the working version (working).

From then on the team updates only the working version. The approved version stays frozen, and a reset button restores the working version to the approved one. That way the gap between the plan and the current forecast is visible at any moment. Each line item has a type (income or expense), a category, an amount, a note and an optional link to other values. The budget can be exported to CSV. The tool also keeps three backups of previous saves because, as the authors note in a code comment, there were reports of budgets being lost on save.

#How does a WordCamp pay vendors?

A vendor payment (venue, catering, AV, printing) goes through a Vendor Payment request in the WordCamp site dashboard. The handbook chapter on vendor payments and the form in the code ask for several groups of data:

• general details: description, invoice number and date, amount, currency, category, requested payment date,
• vendor details: name, address, phone, and ideally a contact person and email,
• payment details: wire, ACH, check or card,
• attachments: invoice, contract to sign, card authorisation, banking documents.

A request without documents waits until the documents arrive. Outside the US the default is a wire transfer, because ACH and checks only work in the States. A card is the last resort, because of the time it takes and the fraud risk. Categories in the code include, among others, venue, food and beverage, audio and video, signage and badges, swag, the speaker event and the after party.

Request statuses according to the handbook and the file wordcamp-payments/includes/wordcamp-budgets.php:

Requests are processed Monday to Friday, except US bank holidays. On the WordCamp Central side, the network dashboard exports payments in several formats: plain CSV, JP Morgan files (wires, ACH, checks) and SEPA Credit Transfer in ISO 20022 XML. The code shows that such an export exists. It does not say which route a particular payment of a particular WordCamp takes.

#How do WordCamp organiser reimbursements work?

A Reimbursement Request covers approved expenses that an organiser paid out of pocket and has a receipt for. The chapter on reimbursements sets four rules:

• one request per person who paid, because every transaction costs WPCS a fee,
• the request stays in draft until the end of the WordCamp and collects further expenses,
• card numbers on receipts must be blacked out before upload,
• expenses in more than one currency require contacting [email protected].

Each expense has a category, description, date, amount, vendor name and a flag for whether the vendor was local or online. The handbook explains that last field: once a year WordCamp Central checks whether any vendor is popular enough to be worth negotiating a discount for the whole programme. The code offers six reasons for a reimbursement: last-minute purchase, vendor required cash, vendor required payment on delivery, organiser convenience, failed payment from Central, and another reason with a description.

#How do WordCamp sponsor invoices get to QuickBooks?

A sponsor invoice goes through WordCamp.org into QuickBooks Online. According to the page on financial data privacy, the team enters the sponsor’s details and submits an invoice request, a program supporter approves it, and the invoice is created in QuickBooks and emailed to the sponsor. The code in wordcamp-payments-network/includes/sponsor-invoices-dashboard.php queries QuickBooks in batches of 20 invoices and marks paid ones as Paid on the WordCamp site. Once an invoice exists in QuickBooks it is locked against editing, so both copies match.

The same page covers data protection. Financial and personal data in payment and reimbursement requests is encrypted, only the request author and finance administrators can see it, and it is deleted once the status is Paid.

#When and where is WordCamp Europe 2027?

WordCamp Europe 2027 takes place in Malaga, Spain, on 27-29 May 2027, at FYCMA (Trade Fair and Congress Center of Málaga), according to the official WCEU 2027 site. The lead organisers are Emma Wager, Lucas Radke and Nilo Vélez. Emma led the Budget Team in Kraków, so I saw up close how much care she puts into every detail.

On 20 October 2026 the organisers page lists 106 people in 13 groups:

Part of the team carries over from earlier editions: Laura Sacco and Uros Tasic, lead organisers in Basel, work in Attendee Services, and Ivelina Dimova and Angelos Synadakis, lead organisers in Kraków, are on the Speakers and Website teams.

#How to get involved in WordCamp Europe 2027

There are three ways into WCEU 2027, each with its own timing.

#Organiser

The Call for Organisers closed on 31 July 2026. Planning started in August 2026, and most teams meet weekly or every two weeks until May 2027. The call page advises cities considering a bid for WCEU 2028 to start with a year on the 2027 team. The budget team description in the teams overview lists financial experience, budget management, attention to detail and analytical skills.

#Volunteer and speaker

On 20 October 2026 the WCEU 2027 site had no call for volunteers or speakers yet. The newsletter sign-up is live. The teams overview says the Volunteers team recruits, trains and coordinates more than 250 people across the three days of the event. I described what the conditions looked like in Basel in my 2025 post.

#Student, through WordPress Credits

WordPress Credits is a programme backed by the WordPress Foundation in which students at partner universities make real contributions to the WordPress project and earn academic credit for it. The course has three modules: onboarding, a project and a final report with a certificate. Participants can draw on more than 90 mentors. The university applies through a form filled in by a lecturer or administrator, not the individual student. I am one of the mentors.

#Why is Hanna on the Budget Team?

Hanna Szatkowska, my daughter, joined the WCEU 2027 Budget Team together with me. Bringing young people into the community matters to me, and it is the same reason I mentor students in WordPress Credits. Showing Hanna from the inside how a flagship WordCamp comes together is the best way I know.

The same work (budgets, quotes, contracts and settlements run through tools built on WordPress) is close to what I do professionally as a WordPress developer. There is more about me on the about page. See you in Malaga.