CNCF Unveils Schedule for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe returns 23-26 March in Amsterdam, bringing the global community together to drive the future of cloud native computing

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced the schedule for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026, taking place in Amsterdam from 23 to 26 March. The event will bring together adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities.

CNCF's recent State of Cloud Native Development report, in partnership with SlashData, found that cloud native adoption has reached 15.6 million developers globally, with 77% of backend developers reportedly using at least one cloud native technology. The report further highlights that the cloud native ecosystem is entering a new maturity phase where automation, observability, and resilience drive competitive advantage.

"We're pleased to bring KubeCon + CloudNativeCon back to Amsterdam," said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of CNCF. "This event continues to be a cornerstone for the industry to share ideas and tackle infrastructure challenges together. The 2026 schedule reflects the priorities we're hearing from across the ecosystem and community—from building more secure, resilient systems to helping organizations deploy, secure, observe, and scale AI across use cases."

The schedule highlights key cloud native trends and technologies. Attendees can choose from 224 keynotes, lightning talks, maintainer track sessions, and CFP breakout sessions. View the full schedule.

Highlights at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 include:

AI

According to the Q4 2025 CNCF Technology Landscape Radar report, 41% of AI developers are now cloud native, a figure projected to increase. This track highlights the growing convergence of AI and cloud native practices and is dedicated to exploring innovative applications, essential tools, and effective techniques for implementing AI and ML successfully within cloud-native ecosystems.

Session Highlight: Driving Adoption and Automation With MCP in Production at Liftoff—Tommy Nguyen, Liftoff Mobile

View the full AI track here.

Observability

The cloud native ecosystem is reaching a new level of maturity, driven by the need for competitive advantages in automation, observability, and resilience. The Observability track will cover the projects and methodologies involved in setting up, collecting, processing, storing, searching, correlating, and generally monitoring workloads across metrics, logs/events, and trace spans.

Session Highlight: The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Kubernetes—Stevie Caldwell, Fairwinds

View the full Observability track here.

Platform Engineering

The Platform Engineering track focuses on solutions for building and customizing cloud native platforms, automating infrastructure operations, and enhancing self-service workflows for developers. This track addresses a significant industry need, as the Linux Foundation's 2025 State of Tech Talent Research Report indicates that 56% of organizations report understaffing of platform engineers.

Session Highlights:

• Enterprise-Scale Migrations Using Agentic Workflows with Human-in-the-loop—Alvaro Saurin & Jose M Navarro, Adobe
  
  
• Bringing Cloud Native PaaS To Space: Onboard Edge Computing for Satellites—Adele Karam Hankache, Thales Alenia Space & Sergiu Weisz, POLITEHNICA Bucharest

View the full Platform Engineering track here.

Security

The Security track focuses on the cloud native security landscape, covering essential areas such as vulnerability and identity/credential management, multi-tenancy, threat modeling, security education, confidential computing, and detection. The findings of the 2025 State of Tech Talent Research Report underscore the importance of this focus, as 65% of organizations indicate a lack of cybersecurity and compliance specialists.

Session Highlight: What LLMs Do, and Don't, Know About Securing Kubernetes—Rory McCune, Datadog

View the full Security track here.

Emerging + Advanced

The Emerging + Advanced track is dedicated to cutting-edge cloud native computing. This includes research, academic insights, emerging technologies, and high-performance computing solutions for specialized workloads. The shift towards hybrid, multi-cloud, and distributed models is redefining infrastructure economics, demanding a balance between performance and cost.

Session Highlights:

• Towards Building an Open Source AI Reference Stack for EU Sovereign Cloud—Madhav Bhargava, SAP Labs & Sanjay Chatterjee, NVIDIA
  
  
• Why Is It So Hard to Run a 5G Core on Kubernetes—And What Needs to Change for 6G—Joel Studler, Swisscom & Ashan Senevirathne, Telstra

View the full Emerging + Advanced track here.

CNCF Hosted Co-Located Events

CNCF-hosted co-located events on Monday, 23 March, offer deep dives into specific cloud native technologies. These one-day, community-led events focus on areas like AI, observability, platform engineering, security, and WebAssembly (WASM). All-Access Pass registration is required.

Registration

Standard registration for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe is available until Wednesday, 4 February, at 23:59 CET. Attendees can choose between a KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Only Pass or an All-Access Pass that includes access  to CNCF-hosted co-located events.

Scholarships

The Dan Kohn scholarship program provides complimentary registration or travel funding to support community members from underrepresented groups who would not otherwise be able to attend CNCF events. Applications for Travel Funding are open through Sunday, 25 January, at 11:59 PM PST.  Applications for Registration Scholarships are open through Sunday, 15 February, at 11:59 PM PST.

Sponsorship

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon is made possible with support from our Diamond Sponsors: AWS, HAProxy Technologies, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat, ScaleOps, and solo.io; Platinum Sponsors: Cast AI, Chainguard, Dash0, Datadog, Isovalent, Portworx by Pure Storage, SUSE, VMware by Broadcom, and Wiz;  as well as all of our Gold, Silver, and Start-up & End User sponsors.

Companies interested in sponsoring KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe should submit a request to [email protected] by Wednesday, 14 January. To learn more, view the sponsorship prospectus.

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open-source software stack across public, private, and hybrid clouds. The CNCF hosts critical components of global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy, bringing together top developers, end users, and vendors. Supported by nearly 800 members, including the world's largest technology companies and over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, visit www.cncf.io.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Kaitlin Thornhill
The Linux Foundation
[email protected]

SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation