Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on the April 2026 Emacs Carnival theme of Newbies and Starter Kits. Check out that post to see all the entries people have shared so far. I enjoyed chatting with Prot about the topic, and he shared some defaults that even experienced users have been trying out. The carnival theme for May 2026 is "May I recommend…". Looking forward to reading your posts!

• Upcoming events (iCal file, Org):
  • Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #5 2026 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/b4192df7-3da4-41b8-95a3-532b93923656 Mon May 4 1900 CET
  • EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/314341747/ Thu May 7 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto - 2300 Etc/GMT – Fri May 8 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0430 Asia/Kolkata - 0700 Asia/Singapore
  • Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri May 8 1800 Europe/Paris
  • London Emacs (in person): Emacs London meetup https://www.meetup.com/london-emacs-hacking/events/314540885/ Tue May 12 1800 Europe/London
  • Emacs Berlin: In-Person-Only Emacs-Berlin Stammtisch https://emacs-berlin.org/ Tue May 12 1900 Europe/Berlin
  • OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed May 13 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1800 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu May 14 0000 Asia/Singapore
  • Sacha Chua: May 14: Sacha, Prot, and Philip Kaludercic Talk Emacs: Newcomer Experience (Protesilaos)
• Beginner:
  • Sacha Chua: What's in the Emacs newcomers-presets theme?
  • Sacha Chua: Working on the Emacs newbie experience
  • Protesilaos: Emacs: decent defaults I shared with Sacha Chua (Irreal)
• Emacs configuration:
  • Must-have Emacs packages you should know about [Updated]​ (Reddit)
  • Jiewawa: Overriding keybindings with Meow
  • Magnus: Follow-up on switching to eglot - more about use-package
  • Emacs config (15:08)
  • badele/idem: Doom Emacs configuration for DevOps workflows (bash, go, json, python, terraform, typescript, etc…) (@jesuislibre.org on Bluesky)
  • Sharing my emacs.d while cleaning up my folder a bit. (Reddit)
  • My Emacs Config (Reddit)
  • Been working on my emacs config lately (Reddit)
  • My configuration and workflow for game development in emacs with Godot
• Emacs Lisp:
  • Contributing to ELPA (@pkal@social.sdfeu.org, Reddit)
  • compat 31.0.0.0 released, stabilization in progress (@minad@mastodon.world)
  • Dave's blog: Writing an automated test to try to find an Emacs bug
  • NeLisp v1.0 — Emacs Lisp implemented in Elisp, plus a small Rust runtime that runs it without Emacs (Reddit)
• Appearance:
  • modus-flexoki (Reddit)
• Navigation:
  • nfdn: Bulk Search & Replace Commands for Files and Buffers in Emacs (Reddit)
  • Sidetabs using side windows. (Reddit)
• Writing:
  • How I use quick-sdcv to get the Oxford English Dictionary in my Emacs
  • Dave Pearson: blogmore.el v4.3.0 - blogmore-toggle-invite-comments, blogmore-invite-comments-to
• Denote:
  • New package: denote-wordcloud (Reddit)
• Org Mode:
  • Stupidly Simple Notes Taking With Emacs - Linux Renaissance (@darth@watch.linuxrenaissance.com)
  • I built an org-mode weekday repeater, .+wd
  • Jonathan Chu: Introducing grove.el - note-taking workflow for Org
  • Experimental/personal PDF-viewing/notetaking minor mode I (sort of) vibe-coded. (Reddit) dired + pdfview + org
  • Import, export, and integration:
    • Implementing a minimal evergreen blog in HTML and Emacs Lisp (Reddit, HN)
    • Randy Ridenour: Managing Multiple-Choice Questions With Org Mode
    • jamesendreshowell/org-teach-worksheet: Emacs lisp and Org macros for authoring classroom worksheets - Codeberg.org (@jameshowell@fediscience.org)
    • schue/org-canvas: upload Org mode files directly into an instance of the Canvas LMS. (@schuemaa@ecoevo.social)
    • canvas.el/canvas.org - interact with the Canvas learning management system (@locallytrivial@mathstodon.xyz)
    • De Org-mode a Trilium Notes, pasando por Obsidian · El blog de Lázaro (@elblogdelazaro)
    • tykayn/orgmode-to-gemini-blog - Source Bliss: Comme dirait Manon, les sources, c'est important. (@tykayn@mastodon.cipherbliss.com)
• Completion:
  • History: delete old duplicates, but still rank by frecency (@minad@mastodon.world)
  • vertico-posframe-preview: a preview sidecar for vertico-posframe (Reddit)
  • VOMPECCC from Scratch: Picking Fruits and Veggies with ICR (YouTube 51:06, Reddit, HN) - incremental completing read with vertico, consult, marginalia, etc.
• Coding:
  • Code to run magit-status on a project (@robjperez@fosstodon.org)
  • Wireframe.el Keyboard-first wireframe prototyping inside GNU Emacs.
  • Auto-mark rules, snooze, marking and filters for GitHub notifications in Emacs (Reddit)
  • eglot, emscripten, and clangd (@robjperez@fosstodon.org)
  • Einar Mostad: Fix Emacs python-mode REPL and org code block with python evaluation problems
  • uv.el – a declarative Emacs interface for the uv Python package manager (experimental) (Reddit)
  • Magnus: Secrets when connecting to DBs
  • Using our new Lua debbuger: LuaProbe, we made an Emacs package for it (Reddit)
  • Package announcement: go-prettify-mode.el (Reddit)
  • Emacs is a fantastic SQL editor - see the comments for more recommendations
• Mail, news, and chat:
  • Dave's blog: Browsing URLs from Gnus Summary buffer (Irreal)
  • Emails in Emacs (speziell Proton Mail) | Jan Iversen (@razorback@nerdculture.de)
• Evil mode:
  • Magnus: Jumping to errors in Evil
• Multimedia:
  • James Dyer: A Tiny Header line Tweak: Image Dimensions in image mode
• Fun:
  • Server play support in nethack-el: Help lobby for support on popular Nethack servers
• AI:
  • macher-agent: Similar to gptel-agent but within the macher context (Reddit)
  • adds $ completion for Codex skills in agent-shell buffers (Reddit)
  • Agent's major mode kit (Reddit)
  • Emacs manager for OpenAI Codex conversations (Reddit)
  • anvil.el v1.0.0 — first stable, anvil-ide split, anvil-pkg sister, and a no-Emacs path via NeLisp (Reddit)- let AI agents use Emacs as a workbench via MCP
• Community:
  • Emacs Carnival April 2026:
    • Free Software Tools: How I got into Emacs (and Free Software) (@len@toot.si)
    • Eric MacAdie: Emacs Carnival: History and Thoughts on Starter Kits
    • Sacha Chua: YE24: Sacha and Prot Talk Emacs - Newbies/Starter Kits (YouTube, 1:05:10)
      • YE20: Emacs Carnival: newbies / starter kits (01:03:50)
      • YE23: Explore Emacs starter kits and other resources (59:26)
  • Emacs Carnival in May (and in general) (Reddit)
  • The gravitational pull of Emacs — baty.net (@jbaty@social.lol)
  • Kent Pitman and Ramin Honary join on #commonLisp #lisp #IDE #emacs #schemacs #UX #lispyGopherClimate - toobnix (@screwtape@toobnix.org)
  • SimHacker/NeMACS: UniPress Emacs 2.20 for NeWS · GitHub (released 1989) (@kickingvegas@sfba.social)
  • Kent Pitman #demo 1977-1984 #MIT #ITS #DDT #TECO #EMACS #LISP #MACLISP - toobnix (@screwtape@toobnix.org)
  • A Report on Burnout in Open Source Software Communities (2025, PDF) (@yantar92@fosstodon.org) - not Emacs-specific, but good to think about long-term
• Other:
  • Emacs 30 Now On Android - Linux Renaissance (@darth@watch.linuxrenaissance.com)
  • Make Emacs inhibit logout in GNOME shell (@cidra@mastodon.uno)
  • Protesilaos: Emacs: save any buffer as PDF (my new buffer-to-pdf package) (YouTube 11:08, Reddit, Irreal)
• Emacs development:
  • The emacs-31 branch will be cut in one week (Reddit, Irreal)
  • Demote 'completion-preview-is-calling'
  • Project prompters always default to current project, if any
  • New variable 'completion-preview-is-calling'
  • Always compile w32image.c on MinGW (Bug#80924)
  • New VC commands for remote unintegrated changes
  • New commands to report diffs of all local changes
• New packages:
  • emcp: Lets your agent talk to Emacs (MELPA)
  • forgejo: Emacs Forgejo Front-end (GNU ELPA)
  • grove: Obsidian-like note-taking for org files (MELPA)
  • keymap-popup: Described keymaps with popup help (GNU ELPA)
  • mysql: Pure Elisp MySQL wire protocol client (MELPA)
  • outline-stars: Outshine-style star headings for outline-minor-mode (MELPA)
  • simulacrum: Inject custom event types into the event stream (MELPA)
  • sql-bigquery: Adds BigQuery support to SQLi mode (MELPA)
  • tmux-csi-u: Tmux CSI-u decoder (MELPA)
  • ttx-mode: TrueType/OpenType font viewer using ttx (MELPA)

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, r/orgmode, r/spacemacs, Mastodon #emacs, Bluesky #emacs, Hacker News, lobste.rs, programming.dev, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, planet.emacslife.com, YouTube, the Emacs NEWS file, Emacs Calendar, and emacs-devel. Thanks to Andrés Ramírez for emacs-devel links. Do you have an Emacs-related link or announcement? Please e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com. Thank you!