When you look at the lineup of this year's Scala Days, a number of trending topics become visible. Unsurprisingly, AI definitely stands out, but broader looks at the evolution of Scala and its ecosystem follow closely. The security of the codebase is no longer neglected, and non-JVM runtimes are stepping out of the shadows.
Let's have a look at the details of the agenda and try to find some talks that might be particularly worth attending. Disclaimer: I'm a speaker myself, and some of the talks I mention are given by colleagues from VirtusLab.
The AI paradigm shift
While totally expected here, the AI trends are no longer just about writing code. The focus has shifted toward using the tools effectively and improving the quality and correctness of the generated code. A common factor of those two directions is the Scala type system, whose strength lies in providing detailed feedback to coding agents and preventing them from generating incorrect code.
In his Where Scala meets AI talk, Adam Warski is going to explore a number of areas where AI can help write Scala code, in an attempt to find out where Scala is better suited than alternatives to a given problem, and where it loses to the competition.
A couple of sessions are going to dive deeper into leveraging the Scala type system to improve the correctness of AI-generated code. Łukasz Biały and Jakub Warchoł in Making the AI agents safe with Scala will focus on how capture checking and capabilities can be used for a less obvious purpose - building safer AI agents.
Two different approaches to building verification pipelines around generated codebases will be presented by Bill Venners in Quality Pipelines for Generative AI - focusing on improving the documentation of the Scala standard library - and by Krzysztof Romanowski in AI Multiplies — Let Scala Hold the Line - emphasizing the feedback provided by the strong type system.
Coming to concrete tools, the Type-Driven AI: High quality Scala code with LLM session by Giovanni Ruggiero proposes a safety net consisting of a number of layers, each assessing a different stage of the software development lifecycle - from compilation to observability.
The evolution of Scala
Scala has been around for more than two decades, so both the language itself and the ecosystem have been evolving. Where were we back then? What are the trends? Has history come full circle? Some of the talks will help us find out.
Odd Möller and Martin Zachrison will take us for a walk down memory lane in their A brief history of Scala session, looking at the language from the perspective of how a classic isPalindrome function can be implemented.
Has Scala become more newcomer-friendly over time? I'll try to answer this question by demonstrating a modern, direct-style-based Scala stack in my Back to the roots – VirtusLab Scala Stack talk.
While not particularly related to the evolution of Scala, there's one talk that caught my attention with newcomers in mind. It's How OOP Earned Our Trust and Let Us Down by Pavel Kozlov, which shows how important it is to leave one's object-oriented thinking behind when entering the world of Scala, so that it doesn't create a bias when learning the functional approach.
Finally, there will be two sessions to update you on the latest regarding the language itself. Jamie Thompson will cover the current state of the standard library in Report: where are we going with the Standard Library?, while Piotr Chabelski and Lukas Rytz will provide an update on the latest Scala 3 releases during their The state of Scala in 2026 talk.
Security stops being optional
What used to be a niche is now becoming a first-class citizen. With the EU Cyber Resilience Act that already partially came into force on September 11 (with full compliance required by December 2027), and with increasing security awareness in the OSS world, Scala isn't lagging behind. You will have a chance to learn more about two different security-related initiatives that share a common theme: supply chain attacks.
In the Advocacy, Funding, and Patience: The Security Audit of Scala session, Amir Montazery will introduce OSTIF - the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund. As an open source security advocate, OSTIF has partnered with the maintainers of Scala to run a security audit of the language - an ongoing project that you too can contribute to.
Antonio Jimenez is going to summarize Typelevel's participation in the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund. The Securing Typelevel: Lessons from the GitHub SOS Fund session will cover the lessons learned and the current work in the Typelevel ecosystem, plus some security tips for your own projects.
Beyond the JVM
While the JVM is the natural runtime environment for Scala programs, others - like WebAssembly and GPUs - are constantly gaining popularity.
In Rikito Taniguchi's session The State of Scala on WebAssembly, you'll learn about the ways to run Scala applications on WebAssembly, and discover how WebAssembly can be used beyond the browser - for serverless platforms or AI workloads.
Scala and GPUs? Yes, Cyfra is the answer. Learn more about functional, type-safe data pipelines leveraging the processing power of GPUs in the Cyfra: Scala on GPU talk by Szymon Rodziewicz and Marcin Złakowski.
Where this leaves us
It comes as no surprise that AI is a dominant theme this year, with the focus on how to use it properly, and how to leverage the Scala type system as a guardrail for machine-generated code. The talks on the evolution of the language show that Scala is constantly moving forward - with Scala 3 and direct style signaling a tendency towards simplification. Security is no longer a niche, but a first-class citizen, with new regulations setting the direction. The sustained presence of WebAssembly and GPUs on the agenda is a reminder that the JVM is not the only platform Scala can run on.
This year's Scala Days will take place in Berlin on October 12-13 (main conference) and 14-15 (workshops). We'll be there too - feel free to come and say hello at the VirtusLab booth!
And if Berlin is too far, we're bringing the highlights to the US: VirtusLab is taking a Scala tour through US meetups (San Francisco on October 19, Chicago on October 22 and New York on October 26), centered on how agentic AI coding fits into the Scala ecosystem. Adam Warski and Łukasz Biały, both speaking in Berlin, will be there alongside local community contributors. See you on one side of the Atlantic or the other!