History
Origin
authentik began as a personal project by Jens Langhammer in Hamburg, Germany. The project's own retrospective dates the first commit to 11 November 2018 (Happy Birthday to Us!). The GitHub repository goauthentik/authentik was created on 30 December 2019 (GitHub REST API). It started as a way to provide self-hosted single sign-on, a need that the self-hosting and home-lab community shares with small companies that do not want to pay for a hosted identity service.
Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2018 | First commit, as Jens Langhammer's personal project in Hamburg |
| 2019 | goauthentik/authentik GitHub repository created (2019-12-30) |
| 2021 | Gains traction in the self-hosting community |
| 2022 | Open Core Ventures approaches the founder; Authentik Security, Inc. is founded as a public benefit company |
| 2026 | Active releases; code at this commit declares 2026.8.0-rc1, nearest stable tag version/2026.5.3 |
How it evolved
Two shifts matter. The first is the move from a solo project to a company. Around April 2022 Open Core Ventures approached Jens with funding, and in November 2022 Authentik Security, Inc. was founded as a public benefit company with Jens Langhammer as CTO and Fletcher Heisler as CEO (Happy Birthday to Us!). The project runs on an open-core model from that point: a permissively licensed core plus a source-available Enterprise edition under authentik/enterprise/ (source).
The second is scope. authentik grew from SSO into a single server that speaks OAuth2/OIDC, SAML, LDAP, RADIUS, and SCIM, with the protocol-specific gateways (proxy, LDAP, RADIUS, RAC) split out into separate Go "outpost" processes under cmd/ and internal/outpost/.
Where it stands now
authentik ships frequent calendar-versioned releases (the code at this commit declares 2026.8.0-rc1, with version/2026.5.3 as the nearest stable tag). Governance is single-vendor: Authentik Security, Inc. sets direction, in contrast to projects governed by a neutral foundation. authentik is not a CNCF project (CNCF Projects, checked 2026-06-22). The repository remains the single home for the Python core, the Go outposts, and the TypeScript/Lit web UI.