Here are a few brief updates on Switch edu-ID
1. Forum Day on 18 June in Bern
This year’s June edition of Forum Day Community Event took place at the University of Bern. With around 50 participants from higher education institutions, we were able to discuss the current status and future of edu-ID. The final version of the presentation can be downloaded via the following link
https://help.switch.ch/eduid/docs/about/events/
2. OpenID Connect for affiliation identities
(Forum Day Slides 13-25)
The announcement of the extended OIDC support attracted particular attention. With the introdcution of affiliation identities in ODIC, services will now have at least the same range of functions in edu-ID as with SAML.
OIDC for affiliations is now available for testing. Please test this new OIDC feature for your own resource on the test environment in the coming weeks. We are happy to hear any feedback on eduid@switch.ch.
Information on the test service can be found here: https://help.switch.ch/eduid/docs/services/openid-connect/affiliation-test/
The plan is to put OIDC for affiliations in production from mid-July 2026.
3. Promoting the use of private email addresses
(Forum Day Slides 58-63)
A key concept of the Switch edu-ID account is the ability to use it for your lifelong learning, permanently, and across different educational institutions. A private email address is required as an identity anchor for this purpose. So far, universities could optionally require users to use a personal e-mail addressfor newly created accounts via a setting in the Resource Registry. It was decided at the Forum Day to change the default setting for this option from the end of September 2026. We will inform HomeOrg administrators in detail about this change in a separate message.
We wish you a warm and cozy summer
Your edu-ID Team