KDE gets over €1 million in funding from the Sovereign Tech Fund

Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency via the Sovereign Tech Fund announced over €1 million in funding for KDE to work on the Plasma desktop, KDE Linux and more.

A nice big win here for open source, and to help break people away from the American giants. If the EU truly wants to be more self-sufficient in tech, funding like this for various open source projects is essential. How much exactly will the KDE team receive? €1,285,200.00 according to the Sovereign Tech Agency across 2026 / 2027.

The Sovereign Tech Fund page for it is light on details right now, so you'll have to hop on over to the KDE announcement for more.

From the KDE post: "We have long invested in desktop technologies for a reason: they are the primary way people access and use digital services in everyday life" says Fiona Krakenbürger, Technical Director at the Sovereign Tech Agency. "The desktop holds personal data and mediates nearly every service we depend on, from booking the next medical appointment, to education, to the way we work. We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how we invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on."

The KDE team said specifically on social media (Bluesky / Mastodon) that the funding will be used towards:

* Improving KDE Plasma & KDE Linux QA Infrastructure

* Improving KDE Plasma’s Recoverability Mechanisms

* Implementing Factory Reset Functionality for KDE Linux

* Improving Security Infrastructure for Organisational Usage across KDE Plasma

* Improving Data Backup and Restore Systems

* Strengthening Configuration Management as Core Desktop Infrastructure

* Improving Network Shares Experience

* Building KDE PIM QA Infrastructure and an End-to-End Testing for IMAP4 and WebDAV * Supporting IMAP4rev2

* Supporting WebDAV Push Notifications

* Standardising Account Configuration

* Improving KDE PIM Suite Desktop Integration with Flatpak-Based Delivery

Hopefully more hardware will end up shipping with KDE Plasma, which is my favourite Linux desktop environment. And it's what's used on the Steam Deck, Steam Machine and Steam Frame for their Desktop Mode too.

In other news the Sovereign Tech Agency also recently launched Sovereign Tech Standards to support open standards. They're doing a lot of good stuff overall.