What Is Processing’s 25th Anniversary and How Can I Join Processing Community Day?

Processing turns 25 in 2026, and the project plans a worldwide celebration that October through events organized by local communities. If Processing has been part of your work, teaching, or creative practice, the site’s guidance is to start planning a Processing Community Day (PCD) in your city. The official page links to more information about PCD, which is the entry point for organizers.

What the anniversary actually is

The milestone is a birthday for the Processing software and language, which the site describes as a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code, active since 2001. The anniversary page frames the celebration as global and community-driven: events are organized by local communities rather than run from a single central location.

Two details are worth separating:

• The year: 2026 marks 25 years.
• The month: October is when the celebration is planned to happen together around the world.

The site does not publish a fixed schedule, city list, or registration system for the anniversary itself. That is why the practical action it recommends is local: organize a PCD where you are.

What Processing Community Day is for

PCD is the format the site points to for the anniversary. It is a local event, which means the people who run it decide the shape — a workshop, a show-and-tell of sketches, a teaching session, or a gathering of people using Processing in art, design, and code.

The site’s condition for getting involved is broad: if Processing has been part of your work, teaching, or creative practice, you can start planning. You do not need to be a core contributor or an experienced organizer to begin.

How to start planning a PCD in your city

The site gives one direct step — start planning — and one resource — the PCD information page. A workable sequence based on that:

1. Read the PCD information page linked from the anniversary section of processing.org. This is where the project’s own guidance for organizers lives.
2. Decide on a format and scale. A single afternoon in a classroom, library, or studio is a valid PCD. The site does not require a minimum size or a specific venue type.
3. Pick a date in October 2026 so your event sits inside the global celebration window.
4. Reach your local community. The site lists OpenProcessing, the Processing subreddit, Vimeo, and Studio Sketchpad as places to see what others are making — useful for finding people who might attend or co-organize.
5. Use the forum if you have questions. The site directs people with more questions to the Processing Forum to share and learn.

A concrete example

Suppose you teach an introductory design course and have used Processing for years. A PCD could be an open studio evening where students show one sketch each, plus a short beginner session using a built-in example. You read the PCD page, set a date in October 2026, announce it through your department and a local creative-coding group, and run it. That matches the site’s framing without needing anything beyond the PCD information page.

Where to go for each part

Common sticking points

• Treating the anniversary as a single official event. It is not; it is a coordinated set of local events. Your PCD is the participation.
• Waiting for a central sign-up. The site’s instruction is to start planning locally and use the PCD page for information, not to register with a central body.
• Assuming you need to be an expert. The stated condition is simply that Processing has been part of your work, teaching, or creative practice.
• Confusing PCD with the software download. The download gives you the environment to write and run programs; PCD is the community event format.

If your goal is to mark the 25th anniversary, the actionable path is: read the PCD page, choose a date in October 2026, and organize a local event. If your goal is simply to learn Processing first, start with the Getting Started tutorial and the built-in examples, then consider hosting later.