Element Blog

Sweden goes live with Matrix-based federation!

Steve Loynes — Tue, 26 May 2026 07:23:33 GMT

Sweden goes live with Matrix-based federation!

May 26, 2026

In a landmark demonstration of the power of the Matrix open standard, two of Sweden's major public sector agencies, Försäkringskassan (the Swedish Social Insurance Agency) and Trafikverket (the Swedish Transport Administration), have successfully federated their entirely separate real time communications systems.

By using Matrix as a common digital communications infrastructure, Sweden’s public sector can ensure its digital sovereignty by every agency having a choice between competitive vendors that all support the same open standard to enable government-wide federation. For example, Försäkringskassan uses Element (branded as SAFOS Chatt), while Trafikverket uses Rocket.Chat. Two separate organisations, two different vendors, one seamless conversation.

Sweden’s initiative to embrace digital commons for real time communications has been led by eSamverkansprogrammet (eSam), a member-driven collaboration initiative involving more than 40 member agencies. It was eSam that announced the go live.

eSam added that it intends to expand the initiative, involving more authorities and end-users to build momentum and practical experience. It also sees more vendors getting involved to complement the current examples of Element, Rocket.Chat and Mattermost. The eSam project, known as dSam, also has plans to formally recommend that eSam adopts Matrix as a common standard for secure and interoperable communication between Sweden’s authorities.

Vendor-agnostic federation

Sweden's public sector is laying the foundations for a truly sovereign communications infrastructure. It rejects vendor lock-in in favour of a decentralised open standard that puts agencies in control. By embracing Matrix-based federation, Sweden unlocks a genuinely competitive marketplace where vendors must compete on quality and value. The result is an entire public sector that can connect and communicate in real time, regardless of which solution each agency chooses. And because Matrix is open source, that freedom extends even further as organisations can build directly from FOSS components if they choose. Either way, they do so with the confidence that they will interoperate seamlessly with every other public agency in Sweden. It is a model that is simultaneously digitally sovereign, pragmatic and future-proof.

Försäkringskassan (SAFOS) presented on the importance of an open standard for interoperable communication at The Matrix Conference 2025, which was reported on at the time by Computer Weekly. With Sweden’s Social Insurance Agency and Transport Administration having just gone live with Matrix-based federation, it’s entirely fitting that The Matrix Conference 2026 will be in Malmö, Sweden!

In a recent blog post about the need for open standard federation, we created a map of Europe’s major Matrix-based public sector deployments. It shows the breadth of Matrix adoption across Europe, and some of the solutions, vendors and providers already in place.

European public sector communications that support Matrix open standard federation

The importance of interoperability

Matrix was born out of a vision for end-user independence; freedom from centralised systems, siloed products and surveillance capitalism. It's a vision that resonates deeply with governments and public sector organisations, particularly in an era defined by the stranglehold of vendor lock-in.

We take it for granted that anyone can pick up a telephone and call anyone else, or send an email regardless of provider. These are digital commons, built on common standards, and they transformed how the world communicates. Yet the more recent generation of communications infrastructure - from Microsoft Teams and Slack to WhatsApp, Signal and Zoom - has deliberately abandoned this principle. These platforms are engineered to be siloed, prioritising vendor growth over user freedom and interoperability.

One of the biggest challenges in public service is bringing together the multiple organisations that serve citizens. A world of siloed messaging apps and vendor-specific collaboration tools makes co-ordination between organisations much more difficult. Whereas a return to digital commons - in the case of communications, an open standard such as Matrix - proactively encourages real time communication between separate organisations. For example Police, Fire and Ambulance crews can easily communicate with each other from their own separate, specialised systems provided they all operate from the same interoperable standard.

In a world of Matrix-based communications, it’s easy for health insurance firms, hospitals, local clinics and high street pharmacies to communicate in real time while simultaneously enabling each party to pick and choose its own technology solution. Indeed, thanks to gematik’s work on the Matrix-based TI-Messenger standard, it’s already a reality for Germany’s healthcare ecosystem. It’s becoming the reality in Sweden too, led by eSam, Försäkringskassan and Trafikverket.

More than digital sovereignty

Europe’s push for digital sovereignty is entirely correct and logical, but it must ensure that the post-Big Tech era is built on the principle of digital commons. Otherwise it’s just trading the flaws of US Big Tech for the flaws of European Big Tech. That might be an economic win for Europe, but it falls far short of transforming the way the public sector communicates, and the resulting operational efficiencies and service improvements it could deliver citizens.

Matrix is more than an open standard. It’s an opportunity to overhaul public service. That’s why Element is so proud to play a significant role in maintaining the Matrix open source project, and to be working with so many governments and public sector organisations to help them adopt Matrix-based communications.

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Air-gapped communications for national security

Steve Loynes — Tue, 19 May 2026 07:22:58 GMT

Our hyper-connected world is synonymous with progress. Digital transformation promises efficiently-run smart cities, improved economic performance, better healthcare outcomes and all the rest of it.

Simultaneously, interconnections also create vulnerabilities; from ransomware crippling public services, to cyber attacks designed to damage critical national infrastructure, or silently extract sensitive data for years on end.

Against this backdrop, air-gapped communications remains the gold standard for security. In matters of national security, the safest network is always the one which is physically separated from the internet and the rest of the world.

Venting an innovation vacuum

It’s no surprise that air-gapped communications, designed to operate in isolation, have not felt much evolutionary force. The majority of air-gapped networks are running legacy platforms; relics of a bygone age. Unaffected by the smartphone era, many air-gapped networks still use Jabber, Sametime or Skype for Business.

In a world that’s grown used to WhatsApp and Signal, poor usability feels like a considerable constraint. It can drive users to bypass approved systems in favour of unofficial tools, creating security risks.

That’s why we ensure Element has the very latest modern user interface with read receipts, threading, embedded voice and video calling and easy message editing. Such features improve the overall productivity of a secure environment; even emoji reactions can have practical benefits in conveying simple information quickly. And while many air-gapped environments only support desktop communications, Element can support handheld devices for use within an air-gap with a consumer-style messenger app.

We’ve also designed Element to support the use of X.509 client certificates for identification and encryption - including hardware-based tokens. Big screens can support GridView, so teams can monitor a dashboard of multiple rooms simultaneously, and chat rooms can include live data feeds from trusted systems within the air-gap.

In short, there’s no reason why an air-gapped communications platform should look or feel any different from a highly-polished online system. The difference is simply that it’s separate from the internet, rather than decades away from the real world. See what modern air-gapped communications looks like in practice.

Deploying into the airgap

Historically, air-gapped systems have been challenging to install and maintain. We’ve made installation as straightforward as possible. Ahead of deployment into a live environment, Element integrates with DevSecOps workflows and supports independent security validation. The distribution includes enterprise features and compliance readiness, for a complete solution.

In a similar manner, although unconnected to the internet, we’ve made sure our air-gapped solutions are easy to maintain with vendor-backed Long Term Support (LTS) to provide a regular cadence for maintenance, and security updates. It’s also backed by our service level agreement (SLA) and comes with Level 3 support. We sell our air-gapped solutions directly, but also through a number of partners who benefit from the stability and support we provide, leaving them free to focus on their customer.

According to The Future of Secure Communications, a Forrester Consulting research study commissioned by Element, 64% of decision-makers foresee the need to give trusted partners access to secured, air-gapped or high-side environments.

Download our report to learn more

From isolation to controlled integration

As one might expect, Element supports single and multi-site air-gapped environments. It also supports, if desired, secure connectivity to other Matrix-based networks using our cross domain gateway to securely bridge partitioned networks. The cross domain gateway acts like an airlock on a submarine or spaceship, creating a safe passage between two environments. The hardware sits in a highly-trusted environment, where it decrypts, inspects, applies data-loss-protection rules and re-encrypts data as it passes from one domain to the other.

A high-security environment that can message to a low-side network has multiple uses.

For national security and policing, cross domain connectivity can safely support communications between high-side and low-side environments with policy-enforced information flow. It can ensure that sensitive information is shared carefully between high and low side environments to speed information sharing, enforcing data classification labels, rather than relying on manual processes in time critical situations.

For military use, using Element for cross domain communications can support connectivity between separate systems. Vessels, vehicles and equipment for example can connect their respective communications platforms across different classes of network security. For remote cross domain connectivity, the air-gapped environment can be securely connected with less-trusted networks to secure field operations.

Proven air-gapped partnerships

Element’s air-gapped customers include primes, systems integrators and defence contractors as well as various MoDs that we serve directly. When it comes to our partners, they typically run multiple air-gapped environments for a range of their own customers. Many of their air-gapped deployments need to federate across multiple locations. Typically the air-gapped solutions support around 200-500 people, although they can be significantly larger.

Element Server Suite Pro (ESS Pro) is often used to replace legacy solutions, such as Skype for Business or Jabber, or as an alternative to a vendor-locked solution. Although an air-gapped system usually operates in isolation, there is still a strong desire to use a solution based on the Matrix open standard as it ensures a competitive vendor ecosystem for a potential future migration, rather than being tied into a specific vendor and forced to ‘rip and replace.’

Defence contractors have also switched to ESS Pro having initially built customer solutions using Element’s FOSS components, or ESS Community. They have done so based on ESS Pro’s improved scalability, management, LTS and technical support.

End users primarily use the desktop version of Element Pro, although there is some usage of the Element Pro app mobile devices approved for dedicated use within the air-gapped environment. End-users enjoy an intuitive modern interface similar to the likes of WhatsApp and Signal but with enterprise performance and functions.

Installing air-gapped

Each ESS Pro release also provides access to an air-gapped bundle containing all the resources that could be fetched from the internet when installing that release. Element’s simple instructions make it easy to import these resources into your own private registry and provide the configuration for ESS Pro such that your installation will use your private registry. And as the same bundle is used as part of ESS Pro’s automated test suite, you know it is all going to work just as smoothly as if you had internet connectivity.

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Seamless encrypted history sharing arrives in Element

Andreas Sisask — Wed, 13 May 2026 08:31:07 GMT

For years, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) has been the gold standard for digital privacy. But it has always come with a silent trade-off: when you add a new member to an encrypted chat, they arrive at a blank slate (as in, they can’t see conversation history). Any previous conversation - no matter how vital to their onboarding - remained locked away, accessible only to those who were already there. You start taking the screenshots of the chat to provide the new member with the necessary context and get them up to speed. Sound familiar?

Today, we are changing that. We are thrilled to announce that Element now supports seamless, secure history sharing for new chat members, effectively ending the ‘blank slate’ era of encrypted collaboration (more on this here). Whether it’s a new colleague getting up to speed on a project, a person you simply forgot to invite to a new chat, or a community member joining a long-running discussion, you no longer have to worry about whether they have the context they need.

View for new members joining a room

By combining the rigour of Matrix’s decentralised, secure architecture with the seamless experience users expect from modern messaging, we’re proving that you don't have to choose between strong security and fluid collaboration.

The challenge of "locked" history

In a standard E2EE environment, messages are encrypted with keys that are only distributed to the participants present at the time the message is sent. When a new person joins, they simply don’t possess the cryptographic keys needed to unlock the chat history.

For many users, this felt less like a security feature and more like a broken experience. Organisations and communities were often forced to choose: keep history visible but unencrypted, or keep it encrypted but siloed from new joiners. Neither was the ideal solution. If you forgot to invite a person to a new chat, got a new team member, or a new person joined a working group they couldn’t see the conversation history.

How it works: Privacy by design, convenience by choice

Our new feature bridges this gap without compromising the integrity of your E2EE environment. When a chat admin chooses to allow new members to see historical messages, Element now intelligently and securely shares the necessary historical decryption keys with the new participant when they are invited. Instead of broadcasting history in the clear, we’ve developed a secure mechanism to share key bundles directly with authorised new members.

Chat admins retain full authority. You can decide chat-by-chat whether to enable history sharing, ensuring that sensitive discussions remain protected while collaborative ones become truly productive. Crucially, your data remains end-to-end encrypted. The keys are shared via private, encrypted "to-device" messages, ensuring that the history is never exposed to the homeserver or any third parties.

How to use it?

If you want the history of the chat to be shared with new members, just go to the room’s Privacy & Security settings and set the “Who can read history?” to “Members (full history)”. That’s it.

Decide who can read message history

When creating new encrypted rooms, by default the history is not shared. The room header displays whether the history is shared so the members are aware of it at all times.

The room header displays whether the history is shared

A note about existing rooms

If you notice an existing room in which history is shared, but should not be - you can change that in the Security & Privacy settings before inviting new members. Note that according to the Matrix specification, all historical messages should be made visible to new members if the message was sent while room history was set to shared. However, because some rooms may have accidentally had history sharing on without users realising that, there is currently an additional constraint in place that keys for such past messages are only shared with new members when the room is currently set to share history.

Future enhancements

History sharing does not work yet when a user joins a room via a Space proactively. They need to be invited to the room since the keys for the past messages can only be provided by an existing member of the room (the one who invites them).

We’re really pleased with enabling easy, secure history sharing for new chat members. As far as we know, it’s unique to Element. We’d love feedback on your experience of using it; like any new feature it can doubtless be improved and polished as we get insights from our end-users.

Digital sovereignty is built on an open standard that enables federation

Steve Loynes — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 06:51:24 GMT

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Digital sovereignty is built on an open standard that enables federation

April 22, 2026

Digital sovereignty

Across Europe, sovereign communications systems are already being deployed, and crucially, they don’t have to exist in isolation. An overlooked part of achieving genuine digital sovereignty is ensuring that an organisation has the ability to switch easily between vendors to guard against vendor lock-in.

It’s a sentiment that was perhaps best expressed by Karsten Wildberger, Germany’s Federal Minister for Digital, at the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in November 2025: “Digital sovereignty means having choices, so no single technology and provider becomes a dependency that can be used against our interests. It is always good to have choices in order to avoid dependencies.”

Without the ability to easily switch between vendors, an end-user organisation remains beholden to a specific vendor. It gives a vendor too much power over the end user organisation. For example, it’s preferable to swallow a doubling in price than to ‘rip and replace’ an incumbent solution.

At the more alarming end of the spectrum, it creates major vulnerabilities. A recent example is Ukraine suffering the loss of satellite imagery supplied by Maxar Technologies, as the US vendor implemented a decision made by the US government. In a similar incident, email services to Karim Khan, chief prosecutor at International Criminal Court (ICC), were suspended as a result of a US government sanction. The ICC has since gone through the rip and replace pain of moving from Microsoft Office to openDesk, a sovereign alternative.

Interoperability delivers digital sovereignty

Governments’ adoption of digitally sovereign solutions, to avoid a dependency on a single vendor, is the right strategy to take in an increasingly sharp geopolitical climate. Even a vendor that is currently trusted cannot be trusted into an unseeable future. A vendor can be acquired, possibly by a company that’s headquartered in a non-trusted country. A vendor could be completely compromised as a result of a cyber attack, or nation-state sponsored malicious insider. A vendor could grow into a monopolistic position - especially if a government standardises on that vendor - and then abuse its dominant market position.

While a solution could be from a European vendor, enable self-hosting, and might even be open source, it’s still not offering sovereignty if it’s proprietary style ‘vendor-locked’ software. This is especially true for chat-based solutions.

Chat should never be a proprietary-style vendor-locked solution

Chat apps have developed during a quite centralised era of computing. That those using WhatsApp can only communicate with others using WhatsApp has, somehow, never been seriously questioned. Likewise, it’s only Signal to Signal, Slack to Slack, Teams to Teams, Threema to Threema, WebEx to WebEx, Wire to Wire, Zoom to Zoom. They are all walled gardens - siloed systems - that don’t interoperate.

Chat has never suited a proprietary model, because it often involves people who use different technology. The original open internet is a huge success because it enables communication through common standards. People can upload information stored and managed on their own system, and make it available to others via the Web.

Email is similar; it doesn’t matter what email system you use, you can send an email to anyone because it’s based on a standard on which all vendors operate. No one ever asks if you use Microsoft Outlook, Gmail or Apple Mail as - thanks to interoperability - it doesn't matter.

As a result (despite email being arcane and insecure) there’s still a healthy competitive ecosystem of email providers and switching between them isn’t a massive headache. Decades of emails can be seamlessly managed during an email migration, unlike years of chat history moving from Slack or Teams to some other proprietary system. As for WhatsApp or Signal, well, as consumer messaging apps they shouldn’t even be used within the workplace.

The role of Matrix for sovereign communications

Matrix is an open standard for decentralised communications. The protocol enables self-hosting, resilient communications, interoperability and end-to-end encryption.

There’s well in excess of 200M people already using Matrix, and more than 150K Matrix deployments. More than 25 governments around the world have already deployed Matrix-based systems. There are more than 40 software vendors in the Matrix ecosystem, and at least 30 major primes, systems integrators, services firms and hosters offering Matrix-based solutions.

The German healthcare system has developed its own standard, TI-Messenger, built on top of Matrix, that’s already implemented by public healthcare insurers. It’s currently being rolled out to local healthcare providers and will eventually support the vast majority of Germany’s 83M citizens.

The Matrix ecosystem provides the ‘digital commons’ that ensures genuine digital sovereignty. Governments and public sector organisations have complete ownership and control of their communications solutions, with the ability to easily choose and switch between vendors, and federate with each other through their own sovereign systems.

Sovereignty without isolation - Matrix-based federation

Choosing a communications solution based on an open standard to ensure digital sovereignty brings another significant benefit. The Matrix open standard not only ensures a competitive ecosystem - it enables each independent Matrix stack to connect with any other (assuming both parties want to connect, of course).

It’s the very opposite of a standard proprietary-approach, where all parties have to use the same vendor. The Matrix open standard enables solutions from different vendors, and those developed in-house, to federate. This means sovereignty does not come at the cost of interoperability, which is a balance that ‘walled garden’ proprietary systems cannot deliver.

In other words, all 27 EU members, and the EU itself, could all have their own sovereign Matrix-based solution for communications. And they could all remain in their specific solution (which is perhaps tailored to meet their own country-level requirements), while all being able to federate with each other.

We’re already seeing this play out. Germany’s public sector has multiple Matrix-based systems including the openDesk office suite, BundesMessenger and BwMessenger. Meanwhile, The City of Cologne runs Rocket.Chat enabling it to benefit from Matrix-based federation if it wishes. The French government is standardised on Tchap, which also sits within LaSuite; France’s sovereign office suite.

Sweden has SAFOS Chatt, its own Matrix-based chat. Elsäkerhetsverke, the Swedish Electrical Safety Authority, uses Rocket.Chat and could therefore use Matrix-based federation to connect with other organisations. The European Commission and the UNICC use Element, NATO ACT uses its Matrix-based NI2CE Messenger. EU-Lisa and NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) both operate on Rocket.Chat so, again, can also federate using the Matrix open standard.

If they so desire, all of these country-specific communications platforms can federate - ensuring digital sovereignty and enabling cross-border federation. All without a dominant vendor, and all completely without any level of vendor lock-in.

Taken together, these deployments form a growing, federated network of sovereign communications across Europe - not a patchwork of silos, but an interconnected ‘network of networks’ ecosystem. Digital sovereignty, when built on open standards, enables communications without vendor dependency.

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By the same author

Element is the fast, simple and private way to communicate with family, friends, teams, colleagues, organisations and the wider world.

Thanks for reading our blog— if you got this far, you should head toelement.ioto learn more!

Get started

For Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows & Linux

Introducing the ESS Community migration tool

Patrick Maier — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:27:49 GMT

Since we launched the Element Server Suite (ESS) Community edition, we’ve been thrilled by the momentum. We are seeing a whole wave of new deployments and steadily growing engagement within the community. It’s clear that more people than ever want a robust, manageable way to host their own Matrix stack.

However, we’ve also heard a consistent question from those of you running older, "pre-ESS era" deployments: “How do I get my existing data into ESS without starting from scratch?”

Today, we are excited to answer that question. Available starting today, we are officially releasing an initial version of the ESS Migration Tool.

Why migrate to ESS?

For many long-time Matrix admins using Synapse, maintenance can be a manual burden including handling complex configuration, managing dependencies and keeping up with security updates.

By migrating to ESS, you leave that heavy lifting to Element’s ESS distribution. ESS is designed to make your life easier; once migrated, you can keep your system up-to-date, secure and packed with the latest Element features just by running a simple command. Furthermore you get all the components needed for a basic Element/Matrix stack out-of-the-box, curated and coordinated between each other, easy to deploy and maintain.

Introducing the ESS migration tool

The ESS migration tool is a dedicated tool designed to bridge the gap between your current Matrix environment and a modern ESS deployment. The tool automates the most tedious parts of moving to a Kubernetes-based ESS architecture:

Configuration parsing: It takes your existing Synapse and Matrix Authentication Service (MAS) configuration files and parses them to discover secrets and linked files.
Transformation: It converts those configurations into values files compatible with the ESS Helm chart.
Kubernetes integration: It automatically generates the necessary Kubernetes Secrets and ConfigMaps.

The goal is minimal disruption. You can set up your new ESS environment and continue providing service to your users while immediately gaining access to powerful integrated features like Element Admin and Element Call.

A "breeze" for MAS migrations, too

Matrix Authentication Service (MAS) is the next generation of authentication and user management in Matrix. If you haven't moved your deployment to the MAS yet, ESS is your secret weapon. By migrating your environment to ESS Community first, you can utilise our built-in MAS migration tooling which automates the majority of the transition - check out the MAS migration guide. If you already have a MAS-enabled environment, no problem, you can still use the migration to get into ESS!

Getting started

The migration tool is available as a Python package and is licensed under AGPLv3. You can find basic instructions in the ESS Community repository. To help you through the process, we’ve prepared a comprehensive step-by-step migration guide as part of the tooling itself.

The roadmap: What’s next?

This first release is just the beginning. Our priority was to get this tooling into your hands as early as possible to gather feedback from the community. Over the coming months, we will be adding more functionality, including:

Automated imports: Direct database and media file imports.
Environment discovery: Automatic imports from existing Docker or Kubernetes contexts.
System health: Integrated prerequisite checks to ensure a smooth transition.
Expanded stack support: Migration support for Element Web, Matrix RTC/Livekit, and reverse-proxy configurations.

A note for commercial customers

While today’s announcement is a major milestone for our Community version, we haven't forgotten our Enterprise and Sovereign users. A top priority for our engineering team is facilitating a seamless "lift" from the ESS Classic stack to the modern ESS Pro environment.

The development to support customer migration paths is just around the corner and we are currently in the final stages of internal validation and will have more detailed news to share very soon. If you are an ESS Classic customer, you will be notified as soon as the Pro migration path is ready - and if you'd like to discuss your specific needs - please reach out to our support team.

Join the conversation

We want to hear about your migration experience. Your feedback directly shapes the future of this tool. If you run into any issues, let us know.

Talk to us: Join the ESS Community Room.
Report issues: Create a ticket in the ESS Community repository.

Start your migration today and experience the next generation of Matrix hosting!

Element Blog

Sweden goes live with Matrix-based federation!

Sweden goes live with Matrix-based federation!

Vendor-agnostic federation

The importance of interoperability

More than digital sovereignty

Related Posts

By the same author

Element is the fast, simple and private way to communicate with family, friends, teams, colleagues, organisations and the wider world.

Air-gapped communications for national security

Venting an innovation vacuum

Deploying into the airgap

From isolation to controlled integration

Proven air-gapped partnerships

Installing air-gapped

Seamless encrypted history sharing arrives in Element

The challenge of "locked" history

How it works: Privacy by design, convenience by choice

How to use it?

A note about existing rooms

Future enhancements

Digital sovereignty is built on an open standard that enables federation

Digital sovereignty is built on an open standard that enables federation

Interoperability delivers digital sovereignty

Chat should never be a proprietary-style vendor-locked solution

The role of Matrix for sovereign communications

Sovereignty without isolation - Matrix-based federation

Related Posts

By the same author

Element is the fast, simple and private way to communicate with family, friends, teams, colleagues, organisations and the wider world.

Introducing the ESS Community migration tool

Why migrate to ESS?

Introducing the ESS migration tool

A "breeze" for MAS migrations, too

Getting started

The roadmap: What’s next?

A note for commercial customers

Join the conversation