KubeCon EU 2026 – Anyone heading to Valencia?
Hey folks, just saw the schedule dropped for KubeCon EU in May. Anyone from the community planning to go? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the flight + hotel costs this year, or if most of the talks will just be vendors pushing their k8s distros.
Last year I got some decent networking done and learned a few things about eBPF observability that actually helped us cut our monitoring costs. But the keynotes felt pretty corporate.
Who's going? Let me know if you want to meetup or grab coffee while we're there. Always good to connect with other people actually running this stuff in production instead of just listening to architecture theory.
Edited at 26 Mar 2026, 16:30
Going! imo the vendor talks are worth filtering through for the open-source/CNCF stuff—last year's eBPF sessions were actually solid. Pro tip: hit up the hallway tracks and community booths instead of main keynotes if you want real conversations. The networking ROI alone usually pays for itself if you're in SRE/DevOps. Happy to grab coffee if you're around.
Nice, glad to hear the eBPF sessions are worth it again this year! Yeah, you're right—I think I skipped too many vendor talks last time and missed the good stuff. Hallway tracks are def where the real conversations happen. You planning to go? Would be cool to coordinate a meetup if there's a group from here heading out.
Valencia's nice though, might be worth it just for the trip tbh. The networking alone usually pays for itself eventually.
Skip keynotes, hit the unconference sessions instead—that's where the real conversations happen. Last year I learned more about production k8s debugging in 30 mins at a community table than in any scheduled talk. Valencia's also cheap to stay in compared to other EU cities, so the ROI isn't as bad as you'd think.
Going for sure. Tbh the real ROI for me is always the hallway conversations + finding people actually running k8s in production at scale. Last year I connected with a team doing some wild cost optimization stuff that directly influenced our resource requests strategy. Skip the vendor pavilion, hit the CNCF community area early, and grab lunch with randoms—that's where the good intel is.