In-Depth

Why You Need to Attend KubeCon North America 2025 -- A Decade in the Making

• By Tom Fenton
• 09/17/2025

It's hard to believe that KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, the premier event for Kubernetes (K8s) and cloud-native practitioners, had its first meeting a decade ago, in San Diego. This year, it will be celebrating its 10th anniversary Nov. 10-13 in Atlanta.

Over the years, cloud-native has evolved from bleeding-edge experimentation to mainstream implementation. A 2024 CNCF Annual Survey found that nearly a quarter of organizations now rely almost entirely on cloud-native stacks, with another third using them for most workloads. Kubernetes remains the backbone upon which these architectures are built. As CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk noted, the 2025 KubeCon schedule reflects communities focused on real-world problems, from scaling platform engineering to tackling AI-native deployments.

What's on the Agenda
CNCF outdid itself this year, and this year's program is massive, featuring more than 300 keynotes, lightning talks, maintainer-track sessions, and CFP-based breakout sessions, as well as 40 CNCF Project Lightning Talks.

Reasons to Attend
This year's KubeCon will have a special energy as it marks ten years of CNCF and ten years of KubeCon itself. That level of maturity and evolution merits not just attendance, but reflection, and I fully expect the event to be filled with retrospectives, bold predictions, and a celebratory atmosphere from both presenters and attendees. Beyond the milestone, the sheer scale and depth of the conference will be impressive, with the sessions covering a wide range of topics. Whether you're an operator, developer, maintainer, or executive, if you're involved with cloud-native or Kubernetes in any way, you'll find sessions that speak directly to your interests.

Adding to the event are the co-located sessions, which will spotlight GitOps, AI, and Observability. Taking place on Monday, these tracks provide an opportunity for specialized deep dives while also offering the flexibility to explore cross-pollinated content without the hassle of attending multiple separate conferences. I am looking forward to attending the AI Day co-located sessions.

The networking opportunities promise to be just as valuable. KubeCon always hums with conversations, whether it's maintainers walking someone through their project's roadmap or newcomers seeking guidance; it will be a great event.

Finally, I look forward to the practical and innovative sessions of the conference. As in previous years, I expect to observe demonstrations that may not follow a fixed script. These include presentations on container-native AI tools, live debugging sessions, and experiences shared by practitioners using the tools of the trade.

What To Watch For
At this year's KubeCon, I'll be watching closely for several key themes. First are the retrospectives and vision talks, where keynotes and lightning sessions will reflect on cloud-native's journey—what has changed, what lies ahead, and where the CNCF envisions its role as both Kubernetes and the foundation reach their 10-year milestones.

Another area of my focus will be how AI intersects with cloud-native, particularly during “Cloud Native + Kubernetes AI Day,” which will explore containerized AI workloads, GPU scheduling, inference pipelines, and secure orchestration strategies. Platform engineering and edge computing will also take center stage, with sessions tackling the challenges of scalability, observability, and GitOps at the scale of thousands of clusters—critical lessons for enterprises of any size as they mature their deployments.

In addition, I'll be keeping an eye out for emerging projects, as KubeCon often serves as the launchpad for promising initiatives, whether it's a CNCF sandbox project or smaller companies with booths at the event.

Finally, what makes KubeCon truly unique is its community-first spirit; the candidness of speakers and hallway conversations often reveals as much as the official sessions, offering invaluable insights into the trade-offs and future directions shaping the cloud-native ecosystem.

Getting There and Getting Around
The event will be held at Building B of the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC), Atlanta. Building B is enormous and features five exhibit halls and has over 33,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Atlanta is the world's busiest airport, so there will be no shortage of flights coming into and out of it from around the USA and the world.

It is easy to get from the airport to the venue on public transportation. You just need to hop onto the MARTA train at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and the GWCC/CNN station (W-1) drops you practically at the doorstep of the convention center.

The CNCF has made arrangements with over a half-dozen different nearby hotels for the event, so make sure to check here to book your stay.

Final Thoughts
As someone who has tracked KubeCon for the past ten years and attended it for the past nine, I'm eager to see how the CNCF will honor its past, highlight its present achievements, and lay out its vision for the next decade of cloud-native development. I expect this conference to be equal parts celebration, engineering, and forward-looking conversations (both on and off the stage), as well as providing insight and actionable takeaways that have been its hallmark for the past decade.

Be sure to mark your calendar for Nov. 10-13, 2025, to be in Atlanta. If you haven't registered, do it sooner rather than later, as the popular events, especially Monday's co-located events, will fill up quickly.

More information can be found here.