g10 Code Turns 25: Haan Had No Idea

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Heike Jurzik

There are places where you'd expect an anniversary party for a company that develops encryption software. Haan is not really one of them. Not because Haan is doing anything wrong–Haan sits between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal and and seems perfectly at peace with that–but because "25 years of g10 Code" instinctively calls to mind quietly humming server rooms, people drinking coffee or Club-Mate in silence, because silence, as everyone knows, cannot be intercepted.

Instead: the Roulez Rouge in Haan. High arched windows. Exposed brick walls. A chandelier that looks as though someone had short-circuited a medieval castle with a design studio. Blue uplighting, a red carpet, and on the projector–naturally–GnuPG.com and the g10 Code team, along with the office dog and the mascots of the open-source world, observing proceedings with the quiet dignity that mascots tend to have.

The evening kicked off the way it should: Werner Koch took the microphone and said thank you. To those who had been there from the start. To those who had joined along the way. To those who had travelled from Finland, and to those who had come even further–from Japan, of all places. That is a considerable number of flight hours for a party in Haan.

So You Think You Know Cryptography

Then: a quiz. About GnuPG, about cryptography, about 25 years of digital self-defense. g10 Code staff were not allowed to play–fair is fair. Otherwise it wouldn't have been a quiz so much as a lecture with an audience.

It also turned out that some people in the room hadn't seen each other for twenty years. Twenty years. In this community, that's nothing. The humour still fit. Conversations picked up where they had left off. The key to a good conversation had, as is customary with GnuPG, been exchanged in advance.

This Algorithm Had a Rhythm Section

At some point, the Roulez Rouge transformed. The blue light turned pink. The chandelier candles gave way to green LED floor lights. Doc Martin & the Martinis took the stage and played music–not the kind that politely stays in the background and bothers nobody.

The kind that gets into your legs. The kind where you suddenly find yourself singing along, despite having had no such plans. The kind that has you dancing before you've decided to.

Later in the evening: line dancing.

At a cryptography party.

In Haan.

The universe has a sense of humor. Apparently, so does GnuPG.

25 Years and Still Going

Corporate anniversaries tend to be about numbers and milestones. This evening was about something else: the fact that behind g10 Code and GnuPG there are no abstract algorithms–just people. People who have known each other for decades, who have argued and built things together, and who travel from Japan and Finland when there is something to celebrate. In Haan.

And who, when the band is good enough, throw their arms in the air.

Twenty-five more years? Bring it on.