On Friday September 5th 2025, GeoCat hosted the QGIS Plugin Upgrade Day, organized by the Dutch QGIS User Community.
A group of 13 (aspiring) QGIS plugin developers gathered in the former lecture room of the GeoCat's historic office building, where we talked about the upcoming QGIS 4 release, and how that would affect our plugins.
QGIS 4 is built on top of the Qt6 platform, whereas the current QGIS 3.x version still uses Qt5 (PyQt5). So the ultimate goal of this meeting was to upgrade everyone's Python plugin(s) to become compatible with Qt6.
After our morning coffee, Raymond Nijssen started the meeting with a brief introduction round. Then Richard Duivenvoorde - who already did some research on the matter - explained us how we could tackle the problem.
Following the short plenary, it was time to get our hands dirty! As it turned out, there is a useful Python script in the QGIS Git repository that does most of the heavy lifting. The script needs to be executed in a Python environment that runs in an (experimental) QGIS build with Qt6, which can be obtained from the QGIS download page.
For most participants, the upgrade went pretty smooth. Some had issues getting the script to execute in a Windows environment, which were mostly caused by incorrect paths. Others had more complex plugins or issues with dependencies, which required some manual adjustments after the script had completed. This applied to the GeoCat Bridge plugin, for example.
We exchanged experiences and useful tips and tricks throughout the day - some of which ended up in the Gitter/Matrix chat room that was created for the occasion - and finished off with bites and drinks on the terrace outside. 😎
It was a fun and productive day. A big thank you 🙏 to all participants and everyone involved in the organization! GeoCat is looking forward to host more events like this in the future.
Cover photo: Raymond Nijssen