Cloud native development increasingly means thinking beyond the application itself.

How will it be built? How will it be deployed? How much infrastructure should developers need to understand? Where should platforms remove complexity? And what changes when AI agents become part of the development workflow?

Application developers will find those questions throughout KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026.

The Application Development + Delivery track is an obvious starting point, but your path may also take you through Platform Engineering, Security, Observability, AI Inference + Agentic, Maintainer Track sessions, and CNCF project communities.  View the tracks + schedule.

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Why application developers should attend

Cloud native is increasingly shaping what happens before and after code is written. KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gives application developers a chance to see how developer platforms, delivery workflows, observability, security, and AI-assisted tooling are changing the way applications move from a laptop into production.

It is also a chance to meet the communities building the tools developers use every day, understand the infrastructure decisions happening behind the abstractions, and bring a developer perspective into conversations about what the next generation of cloud native platforms should look like.

Come with your biggest developer-friction point

You do not need to arrive with a perfectly defined cloud native strategy. Start with the part of building and shipping software that feels harder than it should, then use the conference to explore how other teams are approaching it.

Ask yourself:

• Where does your inner development loop slow down?
• How much infrastructure knowledge do developers on your team need just to ship safely?
• Where do platform abstractions help, and where do they create new friction?
• What changes when AI-assisted development or agentic workflows become part of the application lifecycle?

Choose your Monday based on what you want to build

If you want to attend Monday’s CNCF-hosted co-located events, choose an All-Access Pass; the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Only Pass does not include them.

For developers focused on developer experience and internal tooling, BackstageCon offers a full day centered on the open source framework for building developer portals.

If AI-assisted development is becoming part of your work, Agentics Day: MCP + Agents explores real-world implementations and emerging patterns around agents, tools, data, and Model Context Protocol.

And if you spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between developers and the platforms beneath them, Platform Engineering Day provides another path into developer experience, self-service, and internal developer platforms.

There is no single correct choice. Start with the problem closest to your work.

Follow the application from laptop to production

Across the main conference, developers can explore everything from application architecture and deployment to feature delivery and AI-assisted workflows. Sessions to consider include:

• Going Cloud Native in Baseball
• How We Are Enabling Feature Flagging At Scale
• From Laptop to Cluster: The Agentic AI Inner Loop on Kubernetes
• Sandboxing on Kubernetes with WebAssembly: A Hands-on Tutorial
• Not Just for Infrastructure: Rebuilding an OSS Product with Kubernetes-Style Architecture
• From Vibe to Live: Building for the Real World
• TAG DevEx State of the Union: What We’re Shipping and Why It Matters

The common thread is not simply Kubernetes. It is how developers can build, ship, test, and operate software more effectively using cloud native technologies.

Meet the projects shaping the developer experience

Build time into your agenda to explore projects including Backstage, Argo, OpenFeature, OpenTelemetry, Podman, and other projects connected to the way your applications are developed and delivered.

Maintainer Track sessions can help you understand where projects are heading, while the Project Pavilion gives you an opportunity to ask questions directly.

And if you are interested in doing more than using a project, look for a ContribFest.

For example, From Curious to Contributor: Ship Your First Backstage PR is designed to help attendees contribute directly with project maintainers. Podman also has a ContribFest welcoming first-time contributors.

Look beyond the application

One of the benefits of attending KubeCon + CloudNativeCon as an application developer is understanding what happens after your code leaves your laptop.

Spend some time in an Observability session. Sit in on a Platform Engineering talk. Learn how infrastructure teams think about reliability, security, resource management, and scale.

The better developers and infrastructure teams understand one another, the easier it becomes to build platforms and applications that work well together.

Don’t schedule every minute

The sessions will give you ideas, but the in-person value is being able to keep the conversation going. Talk with the maintainers behind the tools you use, compare developer experience with other application teams, and spend time with platform engineers to understand why the systems beneath your applications work the way they do.

Make room for the Project Pavilion, Solutions Showcase, and informal conversations between sessions. Sometimes the most useful takeaway is not a new tool; it is finding someone who has already solved the developer problem your team is facing.

What you can take back to your team

A good developer journey should leave you with more than a few new project names. It should give you concrete ideas for making the path from code to production simpler, safer, and easier to understand.

You may leave with:

• Patterns for improving developer experience and reducing cognitive load
• New approaches to the inner loop, delivery workflows, feature management, and application observability
• A better understanding of how platform and infrastructure decisions affect developers
• Projects, maintainers, and communities you can turn to when you want to go deeper

Where does the developer journey go next?

If you find yourself especially interested in platforms, automation, or developer self-service, explore our Infrastructure Engineer Journey.

If you are increasingly interested in the open source projects behind your developer experience, the Maintainer Journey can show you how to move from user to contributor and potentially become part of the community shaping those technologies.

Join us in Salt Lake City and build your own path through KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America.

Don’t forget to register for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026.