2026 Schedule
Schedule subject to change.
Find out more about social events and sign up for peer-sharing opportunities at QCon. Learn more.
Don't forget to check the ETA requirements for entering the UK.
Learn more.
Beginner
For those learning about a topic for the first time or looking to gain foundational knowledge before starting a project. For these presentations, you will walk away with a conceptual understanding, knowledge of basic tools, and/or the first steps required to try it out.
Intermediate
Sessions for those actively working with the technology daily and who want to improve their efficiency, testing, and/or application of best practices. In these sessions, you may learn concrete code examples, testing strategies, common pitfalls, and/or methods to solve medium-complexity problems.
Advanced
For the attendees who are actively designing or leading projects with a particular technology and want to understand complex trade-offs, scalability, and integration challenges. These sessions may allow you to gain unique, production-tested insights, architectural patterns, performance optimization tips, and/or analysis of design trade-offs.
Monday, March 16th, 2026
Badge Pick-Up & Continental Breakfast - 3rd & 5th Fl.
Break
Track:
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
From DVDs to Global Streaming: How Netflix’s Commerce Architecture Actually Evolved
Netflix didn’t start as a global streaming platform. It began as a US-centric DVD-by-mail business, with a commerce system designed for one country, one currency, and relatively simple payment flows.As Netflix expanded internationally, those early assumptions began to break.
Track:
The Long Game: Staff+ Engineering Agency and the Art of Thriving Through Hype-Cycles
The Hidden Power of Boring Problems
Every engineer faces the same dilemma: invest your limited time mastering the latest technology and framework, or go deeper on fundamental problems that feel "boring" but compound for decades to come?
Track:
Connecting Systems: APIs, Protocols, Observability
From Fan-Out to Fast: Sub-100ms API Design in Distributed Systems
A “simple” API request rarely stays simple. In distributed systems, one call quickly turns into fan-out across gateways, services, caches, and databases — and your p99 becomes the sum of every hop and every flaky dependency.
Track:
Tech of Finance Industry
Navigating the Realities of Global Multi-Cloud Resilience
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Native Languages - and Wasm
A Deterministic Simulation Testing (DST) Journey: From WASM in Go to State Machines in Rust
Deterministic simulation testing finds bugs by exploring random execution paths, injecting failures, and letting you replay any failure with a single starting seed.
Break
Track:
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
Evolution of Booking.com's Ranking Platform
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
The Long Game: Staff+ Engineering Agency and the Art of Thriving Through Hype-Cycles
The Sociotechnical Staff Engineer: Architecture, Culture and Organizational Change
In today’s complex engineering landscape, Staff+ engineers, architects, and technical leaders can no longer operate solely as technical experts.
Track:
Connecting Systems: APIs, Protocols, Observability
APIs for Agents: Rethinking API Programs in the MCP Era
As API programs mature, a familiar gap emerges: some teams operate with strong standards, reusable platforms, and clear governance, while others rely on informal guidance and best-effort consistency.
Track:
Tech of Finance Industry
Building Payment Systems That Thrive on Cloud Turbulence
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Native Languages - and Wasm
Unconference: Native Languages
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Lunch Located on 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 5th Fl. & Lunch Topic Discussions Located on 1st Fl.
Women In Tech Lunch in Gielgud on 2nd Fl. (Sign-Up Needed)
Track:
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
Evolving Wise Architecture to Power a Global Account
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
The Long Game: Staff+ Engineering Agency and the Art of Thriving Through Hype-Cycles
All Tech Debt is NOT Created Equal
As we move into the era of AI, code that could be called slop or tech debt is increasing faster than ever. This means that managing that tech debt is just as important as ever. However, how do you prioritize which tech debt to work on? How do you convince others that any of it is important?
Track:
Connecting Systems: APIs, Protocols, Observability
Beyond the Dashboard: Why 'Query-ability' is the New Observability
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Tech of Finance Industry
Unconference: Tech of Finance industry
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
Native Languages - and Wasm
Leveraging WasmEdge and Rust for Multi-tenant Serverless on AWS
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
Personalization at Zero-Latency: Architecting Real-Time Feature Stores
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
The Long Game: Staff+ Engineering Agency and the Art of Thriving Through Hype-Cycles
The Influence Toolkit
Senior IC roles are often said to be about influence – but what do we mean by influence? And what are the tools that a senior IC can employ to influence individuals and teams within a large organisation?
Track:
Connecting Systems: APIs, Protocols, Observability
Unconference: Connecting Systems
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
Tech of Finance Industry
Implementing Robust Financial Controls in Distributed Systems
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Native Languages - and Wasm
Reimagining SQLite for the Cloud-Native Era
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
Bringing Real-Time AI to 40-Year-Old Mainframes
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
The Long Game: Staff+ Engineering Agency and the Art of Thriving Through Hype-Cycles
Unconference: Staff+ Engineering
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
Connecting Systems: APIs, Protocols, Observability
The Evolution of Versionless APIs
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Tech of Finance Industry
The Realities of Building an AI Native Fintech Startup
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Native Languages - and Wasm
The Engineering Behind Wasm3’s Performance
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
Unconference: Architectures You've Always Wondered About
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
The Long Game: Staff+ Engineering Agency and the Art of Thriving Through Hype-Cycles
Maintaining System Coherence in an AI-Generated World
Details coming soon.
Churchill (Ground Fl.)
Track:
Connecting Systems: APIs, Protocols, Observability
Async-First: Architecting for Event-Driven Connectivity
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Tech of Finance Industry
Modular Migration Patterns for Legacy Banking Core
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Native Languages - and Wasm
Building Performance-Critical Data Structures in Zig
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Conference Social on 1st & 2nd Fl. - Drinks & Nibbles
Tuesday, March 17th, 2026
Continental Breakfast - 3rd & 5th Fl.
Conference Introduction and Keynote:
Keynote Presentation with Martin Kleppmann
Fleming + Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Break
Track:
Modern Data Engineering & Architectures
Introducing Tansu.io -- Rethinking Kafka for Lean Operations
Tansu is an open-source, Apache Kafka®-compatible messaging broker designed to be simpler and more flexible than traditional Kafka clusters.
Track:
AI Engineering
Reliable Retrieval for Production AI Systems
Search is central to many AI systems. Everyone is building RAG and agents right now, but few are building reliable retrieval systems.
Track:
Software Security & Risk Management
Why Governance Matters: The Key to Reducing Risk Without Slowing Down
When you hear “governance,” you might think of red tape, bureaucracy, or someone telling you what you can’t do. But real governance is about alignment and reducing technical risk. And that matters more than ever.
Break
Track:
Modern Data Engineering & Architectures
The Rise of the Streamhouse: Idea, Trade-Offs, and Evolution
Over the last decade, streaming architectures have largely been built around topic-centric primitives—logs, streams, and event pipelines—then stitched together with databases, caches, OLAP engines, and (increasingly) new serving systems.
Track:
AI Engineering
Beyond Context Windows: Building Cognitive Memory for AI Agents
AI agents are rapidly changing how users interact with software, yet most agentic systems today operate with little to no intelligent memory, relying instead on brittle context-window heuristics or short-term state.
Track:
Building Engineering Teams
The Ladder Is Missing Rungs: Engineering Progression When AI Ate the Middle
Career progression in engineering has traditionally followed a predictable path: junior tasks teach fundamentals, mid-level work builds judgment, senior roles require synthesis across systems.
Track:
Software Security & Risk Management
Building on Bedrock: A Security Philosophy from Bootloader to Runtime
In Minecraft, every world is built from blocks. At the very bottom lies bedrock: an unbreakable foundation that everything else rests on. Above it sit layers of stone, dirt, sand, and other materials.
Lunch Located on 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 5th Fl. & Lunch Topic Discussions Located on 1st Fl.
Track:
Modern Data Engineering & Architectures
From S3 to GPU in One Copy: Rethinking Data Loading for ML Training
ML training pipelines treat data as static. Teams spend weeks preprocessing datasets into WebDataset or TFRecords, and when they want to experiment with curriculum learning or data mixing, they reprocess everything from scratch.
Track:
AI Engineering
Refreshing Stale Code Intelligence
Coding models are helping software developers move even faster than ever before, but weirdly, they’re not keeping up with our fast progress. The models that power code generation are often based on months to years old snapshots of open source code.
Track:
Building Engineering Teams
Leading through Change: Metric Driven Adoption and Introduction of AI to Teams
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Software Security & Risk Management
From Chaos to Clarity: Modern SBOM Practices That Actually Work
In this talk, Viktor will walk you through everything you need to know to build a practical and future ready SBOM strategy.
Track:
Debugging Distributed Systems
Unconference: Debugging Distributed Systems
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Modern Data Engineering & Architectures
Ontology‐Driven Observability: Building the E2E Knowledge Graph at Netflix Scale
As Netflix scales hundreds of client platforms, microservices, and infrastructure components, correlating user experience with system performance has become a hard data problem, not just an observability one.
Track:
AI Engineering
Rewriting All of Spotify's Code Base, All the Time
We don't need LLMs to write new code. We need them to clean up the mess we already made.In mature organizations, we have to maintain and migrate the existing codebase. Engineers are constantly balancing new feature development with endless software upkeep.
Track:
Building Engineering Teams
Building a Culture of Psychological Safety
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Software Security & Risk Management
Unconference: Software Security & Risk Management
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
Debugging Distributed Systems
Stitching Together Traces in a World of Async Callbacks
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Modern Data Engineering & Architectures
Building a Control Plane for Production AI
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
AI Engineering
Building an AI Gateway Without Frameworks: One Platform, Many Agents
Early AI integrations often start small: wrap an inference API, add a prompt, ship a feature. At Zoox, that approach grew into Cortex, a production AI gateway supporting multiple model providers, multiple modalities, and agentic workflows with dozens of tools, serving over 100 internal clients.
Track:
Building Engineering Teams
Unconference: Building Engineering Teams
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
Software Security & Risk Management
Catching Attacks in the Act: eBPF for Runtime Security
Since the SolarWinds attack and the Biden-era cybersecurity executive order, much of the security industry’s energy has gone into preventing attacks in the software supply chain, before software is ever deployed. That work matters — but it is not enough.
Track:
Debugging Distributed Systems
Debugging Transient Failures in Serverless Workflows
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Modern Data Engineering & Architectures
Unconference: Modern Data Engineering
Rutherford (4th Fl.)
Track:
AI Engineering
Sync Agents in Production: Failure Modes and Fixes
As models improve, we are starting to build long-running, asynchronous agents such as deep research agents and browser agents that can execute multi-step workflows autonomously. These systems unlock new use cases, but they fail in ways that short-lived agents do not.
Track:
Building Engineering Teams
Team Topologies as the 'Infrastructure for Agency' with AI
Details coming soon.
Track:
Software Security & Risk Management
Adopting Memory-Safety and Fine-Grained Compartmentalisation With CHERI
This talk will describe how CHERI achieves memory safety for existing code with just a recompile and how that non-bypassable memory safety can be used as a building block for higher-level security abstractions.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Debugging Distributed Systems
Real-Time Observability for Cross-Border Payment Rails
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Exhibitor Reception for Attendees - Drinks & Nibbles on 3rd & 5th Fl. - Ends at 6:45pm
Wednesday, March 18th, 2026
Continental Breakfast - 3rd & 5th Fl.
Conference Introduction and Keynote:
Keynote Presentation with Laura Savino
Fleming + Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architecture in the Age of AI
The Right 300 Tokens Beat 100k Noisy Ones: The Architecture of Context Engineering
Your agent has 100k tokens of context. It still forgets what you told it two messages ago.
Track:
Organizations in Flux: Navigating and Managing AI's Impact on Engineering Teams
The AI-Augmented Org: Redefining Quality and Velocity Standards
Details coming soon.
Track:
Architecting for Resilience
How to Find Resilience Bugs in Systems that Don't Exist
Building correct distributed systems takes thinking outside the box, and the fastest way to do that is to think inside a different box. One different box is "formal methods", the discipline of mathematically verifying software and systems.
Track:
Modern Performance Optimization
Navigating the Edge of Scale and Speed for Physics Discovery
Details coming soon.
Track:
Emerging Trends in the Frontend and Mobile
The New Frontier of Frontend: Breaking Limits with Modern CSS
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architecture in the Age of AI
Standard Architectures and Protocols for Agent Data Access (Including MCP)
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Organizations in Flux: Navigating and Managing AI's Impact on Engineering Teams
Leading Through the Fog: Transparent Communication Strategies for AI Integration
Details coming soon
Churchill (Ground Fl.)
Track:
Architecting for Resilience
Spritely: Infrastructure for the Future of the Internet
Let's take back the internet! Learn about Spritely's work to re-decentralize the net with new foundational technologies that put users in control.
Track:
Modern Performance Optimization
Teaching Your Compiler to Do the Heavy Lifting on Modern CPUs
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Emerging Trends in the Frontend and Mobile
Evaluating CLI Usability for Humans and Agents
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Lunch Located on 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 5th Fl. & Lunch Topic Discussions Located on 1st Fl.
Track:
Architecture in the Age of AI
Semantic Knowledge Layers: Ontologies, RDF, and Knowledge Graphs for Agent Reasoning
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Organizations in Flux: Navigating and Managing AI's Impact on Engineering Teams
Re-Aligning Engineering Org Charts for AI-Driven Delivery
Details coming soon.
Churchill (Ground Fl.)
Track:
Architecting for Resilience
Using Observability to Predict (and Prevent) Cascading Failures
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Modern Performance Optimization
Exploring Fine-Grained Reactivity and Zero-Hydration Architectures
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Emerging Trends in the Frontend and Mobile
Optimizing Performance with Smart Middleware and Edge Handlers
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architecture in the Age of AI
Production Grade Agent Runtime on Ray
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Organizations in Flux: Navigating and Managing AI's Impact on Engineering Teams
Navigating New Performance KPIs in the Age of AI
Details coming soon.
Churchill (Ground Fl.)
Track:
Architecting for Resilience
Maintaining Data Integrity During Regional Outages
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Modern Performance Optimization
Using Data-Oriented Design to Minimize Cache Misses
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Emerging Trends in the Frontend and Mobile
How React Internals are Adapting to Fine-Grained Reactivity
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
Break
Track:
Architecture in the Age of AI
Architectures for Evaluation of AI Systems
Details coming soon.
Fleming (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Organizations in Flux: Navigating and Managing AI's Impact on Engineering Teams
The Psychology of Automation: Managing Fear and Boosting Morale During Radical Tech Shifts
Details coming soon.
Churchill (Ground Fl.)
Track:
Architecting for Resilience
Migrating Legacy Monoliths to Resilient Microservices Without Downtime
Details coming soon.
Whittle (3rd Fl.)
Track:
Modern Performance Optimization
Continuous Profiling in Production: Finding the "Needle in the Haystack" Without Slowing Down the User
Details coming soon.
Mountbatten (6th Fl.)
Track:
Emerging Trends in the Frontend and Mobile
The Frontend Architect’s Guide to Multi-modal UIs
Details coming soon.
Windsor (5th Fl.)
QCon Closing Reception in Pickwick, 1st Fl. - Ends at 5:15pm
Thursday, March 19th, 2026
Continental Breakfast - Gielgud 2nd Fl.
Certification
09:00AM GMT - 12:30PM GMT (3 hours)
Become an InfoQ Certified Software Architect in Emerging Technologies (ICSAET)
Luca Mezzalira - AWS
Albert (2nd Fl.)