BackstageCon takes place all day on Monday, November 9, 2026, the day before KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America opens in Salt Lake City. We're excited to bring together Backstage adopters, contributors, and maintainers to share how teams have used Backstage in practice, including the AI features the project has been shipping for the past year. ne project, one track, one full day with the people who actually run it. AI is changing how teams build software. If you're already running Backstage, you probably want to know where your developer portal fits now.
If you're just getting started, you want to make the most of it while AI becomes part of everyday work. The Backstage project has been shipping AI features for the past year. BackstageCon is where you hear how teams have really used them and meet others working through the same problems. The first BackstageCon took place in Detroit in October 2022, co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America. It was the first official Backstage conference, and it started after the Backstage project approached the CNCF. It has returned regularly since.
Backstage was growing fast, with more adopters and more contributors, but there was nowhere for the community to meet in person. BackstageCon gave adopters, contributors, and maintainers a place to connect and swap stories. The main KubeCon schedule has one or two Backstage talks. BackstageCon gives the project a full day, so you can go far deeper. It's a single track of breakout sessions and lightning talks, from opening remarks to closing remarks, with breaks along the way for networking.
Sessions fall into four tracks: Every talk is labeled beginner, intermediate, or any level, so you can pick the sessions that match where you are with Backstage. You'll leave with ideas you can try in your own Backstage instance, taken from teams who have already done the work. Talks cover: One session makes the case that the hardest parts of adoption are about people, not technology. You'll also get a look at where Backstage is heading, including how one team used AI to modernize a Backstage instance that's been running for a decade.