Infrastructure engineers sit at one of the busiest intersections in cloud native. Kubernetes clusters need to scale. Networks need to connect them. Storage needs to follow workloads. Platforms need to make infrastructure usable. Security needs to be built in. And increasingly, infrastructure teams are also being asked to support GPU-intensive, AI, and agentic workloads. That means your KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026 journey is unlikely to stay inside one track.
Expect to move between Platform Engineering, Operations + Performance, Connectivity, Data Processing + Storage, Security, AI Infrastructure, and Maintainer Track sessions throughout the week. View the tracks + schedule . Infrastructure teams are being asked to support more types of workloads, more clusters, more automation, and increasingly GPU and AI infrastructure without giving up reliability, security, or cost control. KubeCon + CloudNativeCon brings those challenges together across platform engineering, networking, storage, operations, security, and AI infrastructure.
For infrastructure engineers, the value is the chance to compare architectures and operating models with peers, hear how other organizations are solving production problems at scale, and talk directly with the maintainers building the projects underneath their platforms. Infrastructure engineers are rarely evaluating technology in the abstract. There is usually a platform decision, scaling challenge, migration, cost constraint, or new workload driving the conversation. Bring one of those decisions with you and use the week to pressure-test it.
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. Infrastructure engineers have several strong options among Monday’s CNCF-hosted co-located events. Platform Engineering Day focuses on the real-world challenges of building and scaling internal developer platforms. CiliumCon goes deeper into cloud native networking, observability, and security using Cilium, Hubble, Tetragon, and eBPF. OpenTofu Day is a natural destination for infrastructure-as-code practitioners.