Home Assistant at IFA Berlin: a booth with nothing to sell and a smart home that ran on a single Green

The Open Home Foundation, the non-profit behind Home Assistant and ESPHome, held its first booth at IFA Berlin in 2026. Two blog posts, dated 15 September and 6 October, describe what it did. The IFA dates are not given in the posts.

A booth built to be the opposite of a trade-show stand

The foundation says it wanted to avoid bright lighting, sales stands and high-pressure pitches. Instead there were sofas, cushions, plants, CDs and a coffee corner, inspired by the Japanese idea of omotenashi, wholehearted hospitality. There was no product to sell and no contracts to sign. Visitors got stickers, posters and a magazine presenting the foundation's three principles: privacy, choice and sustainability.

Its argument is that venture-capital-backed smart home companies may monetise private data, lock features behind subscriptions, or be abandoned after an acquisition, and that a non-profit is protected from that kind of buy-out. That is the foundation's own position, and it is also the thinking behind the rebrand we covered in Home Assistant Cloud becoming Home Assistant Link.

The most interesting part: what ran the booth

According to web developer Darren Griffin, the whole booth ran on a single Home Assistant Green. The post lists:

• two ZBT-2 adapters handling Zigbee and Thread (our Zigbee coordinator guide explains the choice);
• an interactive CD wall in which physical tags change the music;
• e-ink displays running OpenDisplay;
• custom ESPHome touchscreens;
• five Voice Preview Editions running Sendspin through Music Assistant, which the post says stayed in sync despite heavy Wi-Fi interference;
• Works with Home Assistant devices and partner hardware from other brands side by side.

The post says a technical deep dive was published on Reddit; we have not read it, so we cannot comment on the details.

The people

A second post, by Inês Santos, says eight community volunteers staffed the booth alongside foundation staff and partners Nabu Casa and Apollo Automation, the first time the foundation officially invited its community to work one of its events. The volunteers came from several German cities. The booth sold nothing; T-shirts reading "Open Source, Open to Chat" were used to start conversations. The foundation plans to recruit more volunteers for future events.

Why it matters

None of this is a product announcement, and there are no new features here. What it shows is a working demonstration that a local-first setup with no cloud dependence can drive displays, voice, music and sensors at a busy public event. If you are building your own, the ESPHome desktop app guide is a gentle starting point, and Community Day is on Saturday 7 November.

Sources: Open Home Foundation blog, Making room for privacy, choice, and sustainability at IFA 2026 (15 September 2026) and Eight volunteers walk into a trade fair (6 October 2026).