Get ready for a packed agenda of Istio activities at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026, including Cloud Native Theater Istio sessions featuring amazing speakers, hands-on experiences, and chances to meet maintainers and fellow community members in person.
Istio highlights at KubeCon EU 2026
- Join us at Cloud Native Theater on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 starting at 14:30 CET for 4 amazing Istio Day sessions:
- Tales From the Mesh: Horrors and Successes of Running Istio in Production — A panel where real users of Istio share real world experiences, challenges, and wins with Istio service mesh.
- Zero-Downtime Migration from ingress-nginx to Istio in a Multi-Cluster Kubernetes Platform at Bloomberg — Learn how Bloomberg migrated to Istio across multiple clusters without downtime.
- The Good, The Ugly, and The Bad: Leaving Sidecars Behind with Istio Ambient Mesh — An honest look at migrating to ambient mesh architecture.
- Running State of the Art Inference with Istio and LLM-D — Discover how Istio enables efficient AI inference serving.
- Join the Maintainer Track: Evolution or Revolution: Istio as the Network Platform for Cloud Native — two maintainers explore how Istio’s vision of a universal dataplane has guided the project’s evolution, from powering global multicluster connectivity to enabling AI inference. Learn how you can contribute as an “Istio power user contributor” and share feedback on future improvements.
- Participate in the Cloud Native Novice Track: From First Contribution to Leadership: Lessons on Becoming a CNCF Leader — a perfect session for newcomers interested in growing within the ecosystem. Learn about overcoming early challenges, maintaining momentum in large communities, and how authenticity, curiosity, and community support can accelerate your journey to leadership.
Recommended Sessions at KubeCon
Here are recommended sessions from the main conference with strong Istio relevance:
- From NLB Sprawl To Mesh Efficiency: How Skyscanner Handles 60M Requests Per Minute With Istio | Solutions Showcase
- Intelligent Routing for Optimized Inference | Solutions Showcase
- Bob and Alice Revisited: Understanding Encryption in Kubernetes
- Istio’s Ambient Mesh: The Real Cost of Sidecar-less Tracing
Meet Us in Person
Stop by the Istio kiosk in the Project Pavilion throughout the event to chat with maintainers, contributors, and users!
Don’t Miss Out
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon is always the perfect time to connect, learn, and celebrate the amazing work happening across the Istio community. Stay tuned for more updates as the event approaches.
Follow us on X, LinkedIn, or Bluesky to get live updates from the event. See you soon in Amsterdam!