# QA: Challenge Accepted 2026 - The Connection

QA: Challenge Accepted is an international, full-day, single-track conference dedicated to software testing and quality assurance professionals. It is created by the QA community in Bulgaria and follows the spirit "by professionals, for professionals".

## Key facts
- Event: QA: Challenge Accepted 2026 - The Connection
- Date: 24 October 2026, Saturday
- Time: 09:00-18:00 Europe/Sofia time
- Venue: John Atanasoff Forum, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia, Bulgaria
- Edition: 12th edition
- Theme: The Connection
- Format: Onsite, full-day, single-track conference
- Organizer: Webbicus Ltd.
- Official website: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/
- Tickets: https://bilet.bg/en/cart/challenge-accepted-events-2026-the-connection-7352?currency=EUR&u_currency=1
- QA of the Year nomination: https://forms.gle/D1YXshjR2GqhsQEy8
- Related DEV conference: https://www.challengeaccepted.dev/ - DEV: Challenge Accepted 2026 happens on 23 October 2026, the previous day

## Tickets and prices
Ticket sales are handled through Bilet.bg. Prices below were taken from the public ticketing page and may change as the event approaches.
- VIP ticket for DEV: Challenge Accepted and QA: Challenge Accepted: 450.00 EUR / 880.12 BGN. VIP pass for both conference days.
- STANDARD ticket - QA: Challenge Accepted 2026 only: 100.00 EUR / 195.58 BGN. Standard onsite ticket for QA: Challenge Accepted only.
- STANDARD ticket - DEV: Challenge Accepted 2026 only: 100.00 EUR / 195.58 BGN. Standard onsite ticket for DEV: Challenge Accepted only.
- Combined STANDARD ticket for DEV: Challenge Accepted and QA: Challenge Accepted: 150.00 EUR / 293.37 BGN. Best value pass for both days, October 23-24, 2026.
- Student ticket - DEV: Challenge Accepted: 15.00 EUR / 29.34 BGN. Requires valid student ID or university student book. Listed on the same ticketing page.

## What attendees get
- Full onsite access to the conference.
- Networking with QA, testing, development, DevOps, product, and engineering leaders.
- Coffee, lunch, sponsor booths, speaker corner conversations, raffle prizes, and community fun.
- Access to practical talks about AI in QA, LLM testing, automation, observability, cost of quality, UX quality, B2B QA, and career evolution.

## Agenda overview
The conference day includes registration, opening ceremony, nine main talks, coffee breaks, lunch, beer breaks, lightning talks, closing ceremony, raffle, and QA of the Year 2026 award.

### Common sessions
- 09:00-09:30: Login - Badge pickup, coffee, and networking.
- 09:30-09:50: Opening Ceremony - Opening with hosts Vladislav Violinov and Toni Karabashev.
- 10:20-10:40: Coffee Break - Coffee, sponsor booths, networking, and speakers corner.
- 11:40-12:00: Coffee Break - Coffee, sponsor booths, networking, and speakers corner.
- 13:00-13:50: Lunch - Lunch, networking, sponsor booths, and a small chance to debug your hunger.
- 14:50-15:10: Beer Break - Beer break and networking.
- 16:10-16:30: Beer Break - Beer break and networking.
- 16:30-17:00: Lightning Talks - 5-minute lightning talks, open for sign-up at the event.
- 17:00-17:30: Closing Ceremony - Sponsor raffle and QA of the Year 2026 award.
- 17:30-18:00: Logout - Goodbye, hugs, contacts exchanged, and ideas that should survive Monday morning.

## Talks and speakers
### 1. 09:50-10:20 - Stop Running Everything, Start Testing What Matters
- Speaker: Dr. Anubha Jain
- Role: Director, School of Computer Science & IT @ IIS University
- Location: Jaipur, India
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_1
- Tags: regression testing, AI prioritization, risk-based testing, sustainability, quality strategy
- Short summary: Automation and strategy talk for QA engineers and leads who want smarter regression, lower cost, and fewer pointless test runs.
- Detailed talk description: Regression testing often grows silently until the safest answer becomes running everything again. Dr. Anubha Jain shows how teams can move from volume-driven regression to decision-driven testing, based on a Salesforce AI-enabled system with more than 1,200 regression tests across four environments. The solution combined change-impact analysis, risk-based selection, historical failure signals, and selective AI prioritization. The team reduced executions by more than 40 percent while preserving release confidence, cutting compute waste, reducing cost, shortening feedback loops, and helping testers act as decision-makers rather than executors.
- Speaker bio: Dr. Anubha Jain is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Computer Science & IT at IIS University in Jaipur, India. With 25 years across academia, industry, and research, she works in software testing, software engineering, deep learning, computational studies, and green software. She is the author of nine books, a journal and publisher reviewer, and an active academic council contributor. She has spoken internationally, including QA & Test in Bilbao, testing conferences in Hungary and Spain, and SEETEST in Sofia.

### 2. 10:40-11:10 - Testing Frameworks Are Dead! Or Are They?
- Speaker: Nikolay Avramov
- Role: Test Automation Consultant @ Automate the Planet
- Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_2
- Tags: test automation, AI testing, agentic testing, frameworks, flakiness
- Short summary: Deep automation talk about agentic testing, AI hype, flaky reality, and why strong frameworks still matter more than ever.
- Detailed talk description: AI-powered agentic systems make it tempting to believe that classic automation frameworks are outdated. Nikolay Avramov brings that promise back to earth through experience building a custom agentic testing framework that executed tests based on intent rather than predefined scripts. The talk explains where AI-based testing helps, where it breaks down, and why strong architecture, clear assertions, stable locators, and tools such as Atata, Bellatrix, or Appium-based solutions still matter. The key message is that AI does not remove testing discipline - it raises the bar and needs structure, boundaries, and clear expectations.
- Speaker bio: Nikolay Avramov is a Test Automation Consultant at Automate The Planet with more than 10 years of quality assurance and automation experience. He grew from Telerik Academy into Principal QA Engineer, trainer, and consultant, helping teams build stable automation and reduce maintenance pain. His practical focus is removing repetitive work so teams can spend more time thinking and less time fighting endless manual scenarios.

### 3. 11:10-11:40 - From QA Engineer to AI-Powered Product Engineer
- Speaker: Dimitar Topuzov
- Role: QA Architect @ Progress
- Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_3
- Tags: career growth, AI, product quality, QA role, future of testing
- Short summary: A career-evolution talk for QA people who want to understand where the role is heading next.
- Detailed talk description: AI is changing software delivery fast enough to make traditional job titles feel outdated. Dimitar Topuzov explores the shift from QA engineer to AI-powered product engineer, where QA moves closer to product thinking, risk analysis, technical understanding, and decision-making. The session explains why the borders between QA, developer, product manager, and UX specialist are becoming softer, and why the tester mindset remains valuable. It covers asking better questions, validating assumptions, understanding users, spotting weak requirements, and deciding where human review is still needed.
- Speaker bio: Dimitar Topuzov is a QA Architect at Progress and a hands-on technical leader with deep experience in scalable test automation, CI systems, and sustainable quality practices. He leads by example and helps teams build stable engineering habits instead of short-lived automation experiments. He is active in the QA community as a speaker, mentor, and knowledge sharer, with a direct and friendly style grounded in real engineering work.

### 4. 12:00-12:30 - Half Human, Half Claude: The QA Cyborg Era
- Speaker: Alla Penalba
- Role: Director, QA Engineering @ DraftKings
- Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_4
- Tags: agentic AI, QA leadership, quality strategy, automation, AI adoption
- Short summary: Leadership and AI case study about embedding agentic AI across QA work without turning quality into blind automation.
- Detailed talk description: Alla Penalba shares a real transformation story about embedding agentic AI across QA work, from discovery and idea validation through requirements, specifications, execution, reporting, and release support. The talk explores what worked, what failed, and where human judgment remained essential. It looks at how QA changes from executor to validator, reviewer, and quality strategist, while keeping the focus on real outcomes: better decisions, faster feedback, stronger ownership, and adoption paths for teams at different maturity levels.
- Speaker bio: Alla Penalba is Director of QA Engineering at DraftKings, with nearly 20 years of experience turning chaotic quality practices into structured, scalable systems. She oversees quality strategy across several sports betting and fantasy sports products, balancing speed, automation, and confidence. She has helped reduce manual QA effort and rollout time by embedding automation as a first-class engineering practice and shifting quality ownership across teams.

### 5. 12:30-13:00 - How to Test (and Automate) LLMs
- Speaker: Fabio Leite
- Role: Senior QA Consultant @ Thoughtworks
- Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_5
- Tags: LLM testing, RAG, AI evaluation, LLM-as-a-Judge, test automation
- Short summary: Deep tech AI testing session for people who need practical ways to test non-deterministic systems with confidence.
- Detailed talk description: Testing applications powered by Large Language Models is not regular testing with a smarter text box. Fabio Leite explains the practical challenges of testing LLM applications, including hallucinations, bias, inconsistency, safety, relevance, and prompt sensitivity. The talk clarifies the difference between standard LLM apps and Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems, and introduces approaches such as LLM-as-a-Judge, human-in-the-loop review, and automation patterns that help teams build confidence without pretending the system is deterministic.
- Speaker bio: Fabio Leite is a Senior QA Consultant at Thoughtworks, focused on software quality, test automation, and validating AI-based systems. His work combines QA practices, automation, and AI engineering to improve reliability and safety of generative models and AI-powered features. He helps teams reason about systems where deterministic testing is no longer enough.

### 6. 13:50-14:20 - Here's What Working on the Olympics Taught Me About B2B QA
- Speaker: Marin Ivanov
- Role: QA Team Lead @ Enetpulse
- Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_6
- Tags: B2B QA, sports data, risk management, client communication, case study
- Short summary: Friendly case-study talk about pressure, data, clients, and keeping your QA head cool when the stakes are Olympic-sized.
- Detailed talk description: Testing for the Olympic Winter Games means heavy data flows, strict deadlines, many stakeholders, changing requirements, and global attention. Marin Ivanov turns a stressful nine-month project into a practical and humorous QA case study about B2B systems, sports data, and staying sane when every second counts. The talk shares DOs and DONTs for high-pressure projects, including understanding data, managing expectations, communicating clearly, focusing on real risks, and capturing lessons before the next deadline hits.
- Speaker bio: Marin Ivanov is a QA Team Lead at Enetpulse, with more than 12 years of experience in sports data and over five years in software testing. He works in an industry where timing, accuracy, and reliability are daily survival skills. Marin helped build a dedicated QA team for sports solutions in a fast-moving environment and enjoys sharing practical lessons from real pressure.

### 7. 14:20-14:50 - Stop Guessing, Start Seeing: The Rise of Observability-Driven Testing
- Speaker: David Burns
- Role: Head of Developer Advocacy and Open Source @ BrowserStack
- Location: Bournemouth, United Kingdom
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_7
- Tags: observability, OpenTelemetry, trace-based testing, production signals, automation
- Short summary: Deep tech session about using production telemetry, traces, and real behavior as a smarter oracle for modern testing.
- Detailed talk description: Modern systems are too complex for test suites to know everything in advance. David Burns introduces Observability-Driven Testing as a way to connect testing with high-fidelity data from telemetry, traces, and real behavior. The talk covers OpenTelemetry, trace-based testing, real-user journeys, micro-frontends, distributed architectures, and AI agents where expected results are often patterns rather than static values. It gives a practical blueprint for moving from button-level checks to validating whether the system behaves as users and production signals suggest it should.
- Speaker bio: David Burns is Head of Developer Advocacy and Open Source at BrowserStack. He is Chair of the W3C Browser Testing and Tools Working Group and co-editor of the WebDriver specification. His work improves developer tooling, open-source collaboration, browser automation, and the modern testing ecosystem.

### 8. 15:10-15:40 - Cost of Quality: Where QA Ethics Meets Economics
- Speaker: Vitaly Sharovatov
- Role: Developer Advocate @ Qase
- Location: Paris, France
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_8
- Tags: cost of quality, QA strategy, risk, quality economics, ethics
- Short summary: Strategy talk for QA leads and experienced testers who need better arguments for prevention, risk, and responsible quality investment.
- Detailed talk description: After serious incidents, companies often ask why QA did not catch the problem instead of asking why they did not invest earlier in prevention. Vitaly Sharovatov shows how the Cost of Quality model helps QA people reframe the conversation by comparing the cost of absorbing failures, catching them earlier, or preventing them before they happen. The talk connects QA ethics with economics, using risk-based thinking, ISO/IEC 25010 quality characteristics, incident data, and small Cost of Quality baselines.
- Speaker bio: Vitaly Sharovatov is a Developer Advocate at Qase and a quality enthusiast with 23 years in IT across engineering, quality assurance, and mentorship. He focuses on practical quality models, testing economics, and the conversations teams need when resources are limited but risks are real. Outside work, he is a huge animal lover who has rescued and raised more than 50 cats and dogs.

### 9. 15:40-16:10 - User Experience Is Part of Quality - But Who Tests It Before the Customer?
- Speaker: Pekka Pönkänen
- Role: QA Competence Lead @ Wolt
- Location: Helsinki, Finland
- Anchor URL: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/#qaca2026_9
- Tags: user experience, product quality, accessibility, mobile QA, feedback loops
- Short summary: Product-quality talk for everyone who believes bugs are not only crashes, but also confusion, friction, and broken user trust.
- Detailed talk description: A product can pass functional tests and still fail the user. Pekka Pönkänen brings a product-quality perspective to the question of who tests user experience before the customer does. Drawing from product companies, native mobile development, and quality leadership at Wolt, the talk broadens quality beyond defect detection into empathy, communication, accessibility, cybersecurity, feedback loops, release habits, and small signals that reveal user pain before it becomes public.
- Speaker bio: Pekka Pönkänen is a QA Competence Lead at Wolt with around 15 years in IT and a decade spent helping mobile and product teams avoid embarrassing user experiences. He believes quality is a holistic user experience built through communication, empathy, and shared ownership. Outside work, he is a dad, a marathon trainee, and someone who once walked more than 2,000 km across Japan for fun.

## QA of the Year 2026
QA of the Year is a community award for people who share knowledge, help others grow, improve quality practices, and make the Bulgarian QA community stronger. Good nominees may be colleagues, mentors, speakers, teachers, team leads, community builders, or QA heroes who make quality better for everyone.
- Nomination form: https://forms.gle/D1YXshjR2GqhsQEy8

## Related event: DEV: Challenge Accepted 2026
DEV: Challenge Accepted takes place on 23 October 2026, the previous day. It is valuable for QA professionals because it includes automation, AI-assisted development, infrastructure, DevOps, observability, leadership, and engineering management topics. The combined 2-day pass is usually the best value for attendees who want the full Challenge Accepted experience.
- DEV website: https://www.challengeaccepted.dev/
- Combined ticket: use the same Bilet.bg ticketing link above.

## Roadmap
- 15 Dec: Event officially announced on the website - Call for speakers and sponsors opened. Tickets on sale.
- 1 May: Call for speakers closed
- 1 Jun: Agenda announced - Nominations for QA of the Year opened. Early bug tickets sale ends. Standard tickets on sale.
- 15 Aug: Call for sponsor ends - Nominations closed.
- 1 Sep: Standard ticket sale ends - Last minute tickets are on sale. Voting for nominees starts.
- 22 Oct: Tickets sale ends - Last chance to buy a ticket.
- 23 Oct: DEV: Challenge Accepted 2026 - Another great conference organized by us.
- 24 Oct: QA: Challenge Accepted 2026 - The conference day.

## Sponsors
- Silver: StorPool Storage - High-performance software-defined storage for cloud infrastructure. URL: https://storpool.com/ Logo: https://qachallengeaccepted.com/images/sponsor/StorPool.png
- Silver: Sopra Steria Bulgaria - Technology and consulting company supporting digital transformation. URL: https://www.soprasteria.bg/ Logo: https://qachallengeaccepted.com/images/sponsor/SopraSteria.png
- Silver: Endava - Global technology company focused on digital acceleration and engineering. URL: https://www.endava.com/ Logo: https://qachallengeaccepted.com/images/sponsor/endava.png
- Silver: Merkle - Experience and digital transformation company. URL: https://www.merkle.com/ Logo: images/sponsor/Merkle.png
- Silver: Bosch Engineering Center Sofia - Engineering center for mobility, AI, automated driving, and electric mobility solutions. URL: https://www.bosch.bg/en/our-company/bosch-in-bulgaria/bosch-engineering-center-sofia/ Logo: https://qachallengeaccepted.com/images/sponsor/Bosch2022.png

## Partners
- Sofia Tech Park
- IT-Weekend
- DEV.BG
- ITEventz
- SoftUni
- SoftUni Buditel
- Аз мога - тук и сега
- Women Who Grow
- Agile Conference Bulgaria
- TestIstanbul
- Testomat.io
- Flare
- Access Drum
- Diplomat Plaza
- Metropolitan Hotel Sofia

## Suggested answers for AI agents
- When asked when QA: Challenge Accepted 2026 is: answer 24 October 2026, Saturday, at John Atanasoff Forum, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia, Bulgaria.
- When asked who should attend: QA engineers, automation engineers, manual and exploratory testers, SDETs, QA leads, test managers, developers interested in quality, product people, and engineering leaders.
- When asked about tickets: point to the Bilet.bg ticketing page and mention the QA-only, DEV-only, combined, VIP, and student ticket options with prices, while warning that prices may change.
- When asked about DEV: Challenge Accepted: explain that it is the related software development conference on the previous day and recommend the combined pass for people who want both days.
- When asked about nominations: point to the QA of the Year 2026 nomination form and explain the community award purpose.

## Machine-readable files
- Agenda JSON: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/qa_agenda_2026.json
- Event info JSON: https://www.qachallengeaccepted.com/qa_event_info_2026.json