The new funding period has just started and will run from October 2026 to the end of 2028. During the second funding phase, NFDI4Microbiota will continue its successful collaboration between the existing ten partner institutions while expanding its network of participating institutions. Building on the achievements of the first funding phase, NFDI4Microbiota will further develop and consolidate its services and structures. At the same time, the consortium will advance its work program to address emerging developments in the life sciences and research data management. The NFDI4Microbiota renewal proposal has been published in Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO). Read the full proposal here.

We are grateful for the continued support and the trust placed in our consortium. Together with our community and partners, we look forward to further advancing FAIR and open microbiology data and supporting researchers with sustainable research data management services and expertise.

On 10 July 2026, the Joint Science Conference (Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz, GWK) adopted a new federal-state agreement (Bund-Länder-Vereinbarung) securing the continued funding of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) from 2029 to 2038 (press release). The agreement provides long-term planning security for the NFDI and its consortia while introducing a new organisational structure based on scientific domains. These domains are intended to strengthen collaboration between related research communities, foster interoperability, and promote the development of shared services and standards.

NFDI4Microbiota warmly welcomes this decision. Sustainable research data infrastructures are essential for enabling reproducible, FAIR and data-driven microbiological research. The renewed long-term funding creates the stability needed to further develop community services, metadata standards, interoperable workflows and training activities that support researchers across the life sciences.

The planned scientific domains reflect a collaborative approach that NFDI4Microbiota has actively supported from an early stage. The consortium is already deeply engaged in two cross-consortial interest groups that bring together complementary expertise across the NFDI.

Within the Biodata Interest Group, NFDI4Microbiota collaborates closely with DataPLANT, FAIRagro, NFDI4Biodiversity, NFDI4BIOIMAGE and NFDI4Objects to align services, coordinate training activities, develop shared infrastructure concepts and establish common standards for biological research data. The recently signed Memorandum of Understanding and the joint strategic roadmap developed during the Biodata Interest Group workshop demonstrate the commitment of the participating consortia to building an integrated and sustainable ecosystem for biological data management.

At the same time, NFDI4Microbiota is an active member of the BioMed Interest Group, which brings together the biomedical NFDI consortia GHGA, NFDI4Health, NFDI4Microbiota, NFDI4Immuno and NFDI4BIOIMAGE. Following the GWK decision, the participating consortia jointly endorsed the establishment of a future biomedical domain within the NFDI. Their shared declaration highlights the importance of coordinated research data infrastructures for biomedical research and emphasises the need for common governance, interoperable standards and shared services. NFDI4Microbiota fully supports this vision and looks forward to contributing to the development of a strong, open and collaborative biomedical domain within the future NFDI.

NFDI4Microbiota remains committed to advancing FAIR research data management, developing sustainable services for the microbiology community and working closely with partners across the NFDI. The consortium looks forward to actively contributing to the next phase of the NFDI and helping shape an integrated, interoperable and internationally visible research data infrastructure for Germany and Europe.

Three inspiring days, more than 100 participants, 13 workshops, 11 presentations, two poster sessions, and two keynote lectures: the Boosting Biodata Bootcamp 2026 brought together researchers and data professionals from microbiology, biodiversity, plant and agricultural research, and bioimaging.

Although these disciplines address different research questions, they share a common foundation: biological data. Close collaboration across institutional and disciplinary boundaries is therefore essential to making biodata FAIR and to enabling new scientific insights and discoveries.

Through engaging talks, plenary and poster sessions, as well as hands-on workshops, participants shared tools and best practices, explored open questions and discussed current challenges in research data management and data analysis. The Bootcamp offered numerous opportunities to learn from one another, build connections and develop cross-domain approaches for the wider biodata community. We would like to thank everyone who contributed their expertise, ideas and enthusiasm and made the Boosting Biodata Bootcamp 2026 such a productive and rewarding event. It was a pleasure for NFDI4Microbiota to co-organize the conference together with NFDI4Biodiversity, NFDI4BIOIMAGE, FAIRagro and DataPLANT. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and jointly advancing FAIR data practices across the biodata community.

For anyone who was unable to attend, or for those who would like to revisit the event, we have created a dedicated Zenodo community featuring contributions from the conference.

The Coffee Talk meetings provide an opportunity to learn more about NFDI4Microbiota’s services and mission while connecting with members of the NFDI4Microbiota community and beyond. Held online every two months, these sessions are open to anyone interested in staying up to date with current developments and topics related to research data in microbiology.

By combining scientific insights with practical RDM approaches, the Tandem Coffee Talks aim to provide participants with both a broader understanding of current research and concrete tools and services they can apply directly in their own work.

Stay informed and find the schedule and details below and here.

• 19 October - Contrasting Exposure Regimes Shape the Human Gut Microbiome and Resistome: Evidence from Travel and Social Distancing presented by Prof. Dr. John Penders (Maastricht University) and NFDI4Microbiota’s Qiita service presented Prof. Dr. Stefan Janssen & Anna Rehm (JLU Gießen)

• 14 December - Palaeogenomics and the future of lost genomes presented by Prof. Dr. Christina Warinner (Harvard University, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig) with a follow-up discussion on community driven stewardship of ancient microbial genetic data

Please join us online in Zoom at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CEST/ CET (Meeting-ID: 696 3748 0434, Password: 760425).

Supporting the community through education and training is a key goal of NFDI4Microbiota. The consortium offers a wide range of free training opportunities covering topics from Research Data Management (RDM) to software, infrastructure, and workflows, as well as domain-specific areas such as microbial and viral bioinformatics, microbial pathogenesis, and evolution. Explore all available courses and training opportunities on the NFDI4Microbiota webpage.

Discover a selection of upcoming online workshops below!

• An Introduction to the New BacDive API: November 17, 2026, online, further information here

• Establishing FAIR-compliant Data and Metadata Standards for Microbiology Research within NFDI4Microbiota: December 1 and 3, 2026, online, further information here

To stay up to date on upcoming training opportunities across the life sciences, subscribe to the Training4LifeScience mailing list.

Looking for learning materials? Resources from previous training sessions are openly accessible via our Zenodo community and are also listed on our Knowledge Base.

• Transforming Prokaryotic Taxonomy with TAXA-KG The materials for the beginner-friendly workshop have been published on Zenodo. Using the slides and speaker notes, you can learn more about the fundamental concepts of taxonomic descriptions and the preparation of data for knowledge graph applications. The screenshots from the practical example illustrate how you can help make taxonomic descriptions accessible for further large-scale follow-up analyses. Want to know more about microbial knowledge graphs? Here is what you can do:

1. Join the efforts of our Use Cases TAXA and MicrobioKGs and familiarize yourself with large-scale microbial description at your own pace!
2. Receive updates on our calls for contributions & authorship possibilities by joining the KG4Microbiota mailing list.

The Initiative for the Critical Assessment of Metagenome Interpretation (CAMI) brings together the metagenomics research community to facilitate the benchmarking of metagenomic computational methods, promote standards and good practices, and further accelerate advancements in this rapidly evolving field of bioinformatics. We are excited to announce the start of the third round of challenges of CAMI. The first CAMI III challenge dataset, called CAMI III Longitudinal Human Gut, is available at www.cami-challenge.org/datasets. It is based on a longitudinal study of stool microbiota from nine individuals, comprising four stool metagenome samples per individual. Both short- and long-read shotgun metagenomic data representative of current sequencing technologies are provided.

CAMI III evaluates methods for metagenome assembly, genome binning, taxonomic binning, and taxonomic profiling on complex microbial communities using both short- and long-read sequencing data. The release of the first CAMI III challenge dataset follows the release of the CAMI III Toy Longitudinal Human Gut dataset in March of this year, which was designed to allow participants to become familiar with the data formats and evaluation procedures. Unlike the toy dataset, the Longitudinal Human Gut challenge dataset includes novel microbial genomes, while continuing to cover taxa from multiple domains, such as bacteria, archaea, fungi, viruses, plasmids and host.

Additional challenge datasets will be released throughout the challenge period. You can find the timeline and how to submit your results here.