KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026: From user to contributor to maintainer

You do not need “maintainer” in your job title to start following the maintainer journey at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026.

You might be an SRE who has spent years operating a CNCF project in production.

An application developer who found and fixed a bug.

An infrastructure engineer who has opened issues, improved documentation, or built something your upstream community could use.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gives attendees several ways to move closer to the open source communities behind the technology, whether you are already a maintainer or are making your first contribution. Register Today!

Why maintainers and future contributors should attend

For existing maintainers, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon creates rare face-to-face time with contributors, users, and neighboring project communities. Those conversations can surface real-world feedback, new contributors, shared technical challenges, and opportunities to collaborate across the ecosystem.

For attendees who are not maintainers yet, the event provides multiple low-barrier ways to get closer to a project. Maintainer Track sessions, ContribFests, Project Lightning Talks, and the Project Pavilion can help turn “I use this project” into “I know how to contribute to it.”

Come with a community challenge or a curiosity

If you already maintain a project, think about the challenge that is hardest to solve asynchronously: contributor onboarding, release processes, project governance, documentation, adoption feedback, or collaboration across projects. Face-to-face time can make those conversations much easier.

If you are newer to contribution, your questions may be simpler:

Which project community matches the technologies or problems I care about?

Where could someone with my skills make a useful first contribution?

How do contributors move from a first issue or pull request into deeper project involvement?

What do maintainers wish more users understood about participating in their projects?

Already a maintainer? Start Sunday

For eligible CNCF project maintainers, the CNCF Maintainer Summit takes place on Sunday, November 8 before the main conference.

The Summit provides a dedicated space for the people behind CNCF projects to meet face-to-face, share best practices, discuss contribution processes, and work through common challenges across project communities.

Separate registration and eligibility requirements apply, so attendees should review those requirements ahead of time.

Monday: See what projects are building

On Monday, Project Lightning Talks give CNCF projects five minutes each to share recent updates, new features, and other highlights.

Unlike the CNCF-hosted co-located events, Project Lightning Talks are available with any in-person KubeCon + CloudNativeCon pass.

For someone exploring the ecosystem, this is a fast way to discover projects you may not already know. For existing contributors and maintainers, it is a chance to see what neighboring communities are working on.

Tuesday through Thursday: Go behind the project

The Maintainer Track is where attendees can hear directly from CNCF project maintainers about new developments, technical challenges, implementation considerations, community priorities, and project roadmaps. Sessions to consider include:

Kubernetes SIG ContribEx: Sub-Project and Governance Updates

Kubernetes SIG Architecture Intro and Updates

TAG DevEx State of the Union: What We’re Shipping and Why It Matters

Built for What’s Next: Backstage’s Role in AI-Assisted Development

Maintainer sessions from projects including Harbor, Flux, Cilium, etcd, Linkerd, OpenCost, KubeVirt, and many others

If there is a project your organization depends on, this is an opportunity to hear from and talk with the people building it.

Make your first contribution

ContribFests turn that conversation into hands-on participation.

Attendees can work alongside project maintainers and contributors to tackle real issues, learn contribution workflows, understand project architecture, and begin participating in a community.

This year’s program includes opportunities with communities including:

OpenTelemetry

Harbor

Podman

Backstage

Argo CD

Meshery

Inspektor Gadget

Some sessions explicitly welcome first-time contributors.

You do not have to arrive knowing exactly how you want to contribute. Showing up curious is enough to start.

Visit the Project Pavilion

The Project Pavilion is open during the main conference in the Solutions Showcase and provides another easy way to connect directly with project communities.

Stop by a project kiosk. Ask maintainers what they are working on. Find out where they need help. Discover a project you did not know existed.

Sometimes the path into open source starts with a pull request. Sometimes it starts with a hallway conversation.

Don’t schedule every minute

For maintainers and future contributors, some of the most valuable parts of the week may never appear on the formal schedule. A conversation at a project kiosk can turn into end-user feedback. A ContribFest introduction can become a first pull request. A hallway discussion can connect two projects working through the same problem.

Use the scheduled programming as a starting point, but leave room for the community around it. Those relationships are often what continue long after the conference ends.

What you can take back to your project or community

For maintainers, the value can be practical: new contributor relationships, direct end-user feedback, ideas borrowed from other project communities, and time to solve problems that are difficult to work through in issues and chat.

For future contributors, you may leave with:

A clearer understanding of where your skills fit in the CNCF ecosystem

A first contribution, issue, or community connection to continue after the event

A better understanding of project roadmaps, governance, and contributor pathways

Relationships with maintainers and contributors who can help turn curiosity into ongoing participation

Maintainers can come from anywhere

That is why the Maintainer Journey overlaps every other journey in this series.

SREs bring production experience. Application developers understand how projects feel to the people building with them. Infrastructure engineers understand what happens when those projects have to operate at scale.

Open source communities need all of those perspectives.

Whether you already maintain a CNCF project, have made a few contributions, or are simply wondering how to get involved, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gives you a place to take the next step.

Join us in Salt Lake City and find your place in the cloud native community.

Don’t forget to register for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026.