Meet the Ad-Filtering Dev Summit 2025 speakers

Less than a month separates us from this year’s Ad-Filtering Dev Summit — the annual event that brings together software developers and experts from the fields of ad blocking and privacy protection under one roof. They all come together to discuss the hottest topics, exchange ideas, and find new solutions to the most pressing problems the industry faces.

Now that the Summit’s agenda is officially out, it is finally time to meet the speakers! This year, there will be four talks by people from AdGuard — some, like Andrey and Dávid, are seasoned AFDS veterans, while others are attending the Summit for the first time.

Most of the talks by AdGuardians, as we sometimes like to call ourselves, will be highly technical, but Sofia’s talk will be interesting to everyone, regardless of their level of technical knowledge — so make sure to check it out!

“I’m very pleased to welcome the Ad Filtering Dev Summit to our home turf in Cyprus. I believe that this year we have an especially strong lineup of speakers and participants, and I’m confident that the quality of the talks will be top-notch. The industry never stands still, and there are countless things we need to discuss.”

— Andrey Meshkov, CTO and Co-Founder at AdGuard

Let’s not forget the people representing other AFDS co-hosts — Ghostery and eyeo — including Caroline Hill, who will once again moderate the entire event and deliver the opening and closing speeches.

There’s no surprise that Aga and Toni from eyeo will focus their talks on ad blocking, while Philipp from Ghostery will talk about tracking protection.

“Co-hosting the Ad Filtering Dev Summit for the first time is an honor and a unique chance to look ahead together. This summit is where our community pushes boundaries and explores fresh ideas for tomorrow’s web. We are proud to stand at the heart of this transformation toward a more private, transparent, and user-centric internet.”

— Diana Sandu, Head of Product at Ghostery

It’s a long-standing tradition for developers of many major browsers to come to AFDS to talk and answer questions about the latest developments in their browsers and how these will affect ad blockers. This year is no exception — talks by speakers from Google, Brave, and Opera will surely be among the most anticipated. And this may be especially true for DuckDuckGo, because they will be participating in the Summit for the first time!

Every one of these presenters has extensive experience both in their own field and in speaking at AFDS, so you can expect lots of great insights and high-quality talks. And to finish the first day, they will all come on stage together to take part in the Browser panel — an almost-hour-long session of questions from the audience and mutual discussion.

“We are excited to organize the Ad-Filtering Dev Summit for the eighth time now. This event has become the flagship conference for our industry: we can’t wait to learn from peers and connect with the community.”

— Cornelius Witt, Director of Global Public Affairs at eyeo

Another great perk of AFDS is that, year after year, it features many speakers with academic backgrounds. They often provide unique perspectives on topics that might otherwise be hard to find within the developer community.

The doors of AFDS are always open to ad-blocking and privacy researchers eager to share their findings. Of course, same applies to our friends from Malwarebytes — we’re happy to see them back with a talk, this time presented by Mohamed Elgendi, one of the Summit’s first-timers.

On the other end of the spectrum are grizzled filter developers Peter and Ryan — they are extremely well-known to anyone who follows AFDS, to the point that it’s hard to imagine the Summit without them.

Both Peter and Ryan (along with Dávid and Elizaveta from AdGuard and Sam Macbeth from DuckDuckGo) will be participating in the Filters panel. Similarly to the Browser panel, they will join each other on stage to talk about everything filtering-related.

Last but certainly not least, here is the final pair of AFDS 2025 speakers. Leigh (together with Alex Cone from Google) and Aleksei will offer a unique perspective, representing the other side of the divide. They will bring a fresh angle to the Summit by sharing how advertisers and marketers view and address privacy and ad-filtering challenges.

Big props to them for agreeing to participate in AFDS, and make sure you don’t miss their talks — the Q&A sections alone promise a lot of fireworks!

And to wrap things up it’s time to reveal our wildcard participants — good folks from the privacy-focused educational project Techlore. If you follow the world of privacy, you probably have heard about their YouTube channel.

Henry Fisher, Techlore’s CEO and founder, will deliver a short talk, but also their team will interview Summit participants and produce a feature about the event. Stay tuned!

If you were on the fence about joining us at AFDS, now, after seeing the amazing speaker line-up, you’ll have an easy decision to come to Limassol, Cyprus, this October! By the way, if you do attend, we’ve prepared a handy Limassol travel guide for you — covering everything from how to get to Cyprus to where to stay and which restaurants to try.

So don’t miss your chance to participate in the Ad-Filtering Dev Summit — it’ll take place on October 23-24 this year in Limassol, Cyprus.

Click the button below to register as a participant for free — and see you in Limassol!