MCP & AI Conferences to Check Out in 2026
AI moves at a whiplash-inducing speed. Nearly every week there is some game-changing new development. To stay on top of things, AI enthusiasts and engineers remain consistently immersed in product announcements, while also tinkering with new AI advancements. However, it’s also important to get out of day-to-day news cycles and experimentation; being around other AI experts can offer a more elevated perspective and actionable advice.
That’s exactly what AI conferences offer. To top it off, you also gain community amongst like-minded individuals. These are the MCP and AI conferences worth checking out in 2026, many of which also offer live streaming options.
π· MCP-Specific Events
MCP has become the standard way for connecting AI to external tools and data. Here are the top events within the MCP community.
- MCPconference London + ContainerDays London February 11β12, 2026 | London | The first stop in the MCPconference global series, co-located with ContainerDays London. MCPconference also has other stops throughout the year (including an NYC event on March 11, along with Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, San Jose, Singapore.) This event brings together the people building with MCP, with talks ranging from agent frameworks and tooling to enterprise integrations and production infrastructure.
- Agentics Day: MCP + Agents (CNCF / Linux Foundation) March 23, 2026 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | A half-day event co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe. This event is focused on real-world MCP implementations, security, and enterprise integration. Speakers include MCP core maintainers and MCP experts from companies like Anthropic, Block, and more.
- MCP Dev Summit NYC April 2β3, 2026 | New York City | This is The Linux Foundation’s flagship MCP event for 2026. With nearly 50 speakers from companies like Google, Goose, and Anthropic, attendees can expect actionable advice on production implementations, security, and enterprise integration. This is highest-profile dedicated MCP gathering in North America.
Shameless plug alert: I will be speaking at MCP Dev Summit NYC. My talk is “How to Scale MCP Without Skipping Compliance.”
- MCP Dev Summit Europe (Linux Foundation) Sept 17-19, 2026 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | After Anthropic donated MCP to The Linux Foundation, they confirmed a slate of 2026 programming around MCP. This is the the Europe counterpart to the NYC event.
- MCP Connect Day Ongoing, various dates and locations | This is a recurring, community-organized series organized by Alpic. These events are lower-key but consistently active; they are a good pulse check on grassroots MCP adoption and innovation. In Q1 of 2026, they hosted events in Paris and NYC. Check out Alpic’s Twitter or LinkedIn for updates or follow them on Luma (where they post events).
π€ Pure AI & General AI Conferences
These flagship AI events are for a high-level and broad audience. They also have a major industry impact.
- Cisco AI Summit January 2026 | Virtual / On-Demand l High-profile keynotes from Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, Fei-Fei Li, and more. Available on-demand for those who missed it.
- Optimized AI Conference (OAI) March 30β31, 2026 | Atlanta, GA l A practitioner-first, hands-on event for engineers and data scientists building and deploying AI in production. Covers agentic systems, LLM evals, observability, and multi-agent architectures. Affordable ($250 tickets) with speakers from Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Netflix.
- HumanX April 6β9, 2026 | San Francisco, CA | Sometimes called the “Davos of AI,” this conference focuses on high-level topics like AI governance, strategy, safety, and enterprise transformation. 6,500+ CEOs, policymakers, investors, and enterprise leaders attend. There are five different tracks for attendees: Builders (product, engineering), Command Desk (corporate strategy, legal & compliance), Control Room (finance, HR), Customer Engine (marketing, sales) and Ecosystem (VC and startups).
- HumanX also holds the event in Europe in Amsterdam, Netherlands on September 24-26.
- Ai4 August 4β6, 2026 | Las Vegas, NV | The self-proclaimed “largest AI conference in America”, AI4 boasts 12,000 attendees, 1,000 speakers, and 400 exhibitors. Attendees and speakers are primarily Fortune 500 IT and business decision-makers across financial services, healthcare, cybersecurity, manufacturing, and more.
- The AI Conference September 29βOctober 1, 2026 | San Francisco, CA | A vendor-neutral, deeply technical conference covering AGI, LLMs, agents, infrastructure, and applied A, this conference offers five tracks: AI Frontiers, AI Developers, AI Strategy, Applied AI, and AI Infrastructure. Roughly 5,500+ builders, researchers, and leaders attend each year.
- World Summit AI October 7β8, 2026 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | The 10th anniversary edition of one of the oldest and most globally recognized AI summits. Anchors “World AI Week” (Oct 5β9), a broader ecosystem of 100+ satellite events across Amsterdam. There are other World Summits in other continents throughout the year, as well.
π’ Big Tech Developer Conferences
These vendor-hosted developer events have become de facto AI conferences. These events are helpful for tracking where the major platforms are taking their AI and MCP tooling.
- NVIDIA GTC March 16β19, 2026 | San Jose, CA | Often called the “Woodstock of AI,” this premier global conference is for developers, researchers, and enterprise IT leaders. Talks center on AI infrastructure, physical AI, agentic systems, and inference. Jensen Huang’s keynote alone sets industry direction for the year. 25,000+ in-person attendees, 300,000+ virtual.
- Google Cloud Next April 22β24, 2026 | Las Vegas, NV | Google’s flagship cloud and AI event, attendees can expect major Gemini, Vertex AI, and agent-related announcements. Heavily attended by enterprise IT and cloud architects, this event is also live streamed.
- Atlassian Team ’26 May 5β7, 2026 | Anaheim, CA | Atlassian is explicitly marketing this as “the global conference for AI-forward teams.” Rovo AI will be front and center, along with other Atlassian’s MCP server and other AI features that Atlassian will roll out. Team is a highly relevant event for teams tracking AI-powered productivity and collaboration tooling.
- Microsoft Build TBD date & location | Because Microsoft’s annual developer conference has moved out of Seattle, no new dates or location have been announced. However, this conference has historically occurred in May. Expect deep coverage of Copilot, Azure AI, and MCP-related tooling.
- Google I/O May 19β20, 2026 | Mountain View, CA | Google’s primary developer conference, sessions focus on Gemini, Android, AI in Chrome and Workspace, and agentic developer tools. Free to watch online; limited in-person attendance by invite or lottery.
- Salesforce Dreamforce September 15β17, 2026 | San Francisco, CA | Salesforce’s massive annual conference draws 40,000+ in-person attendees. In 2026, Agentforce will dominate the agenda, which is Salesforce’s push into AI agents is directly adjacent to the broader MCP ecosystem conversation.
- AWS re:Invent Late November / Early December, 2026 | Las Vegas, NV | This is one of the largest developer conferences in the world at ~60,000 attendees. AWS has been actively building out MCP and agentic AI tooling through Amazon Bedrock and the Strands Agents SDK, making this a key event for tracking enterprise AI and MCP adoption heading into 2027.
π§ Developer & Platform Ecosystem Conferences
These events center on the platforms and infrastructure where AI and MCP adoption is happening.
- KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe March 23β26, 2026 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | The cloud-native community’s flagship event. MCP in enterprise environments increasingly lives in Kubernetes and containerized infrastructure, making this directly relevant territory. The co-located Agentics Day (see MCP section above) also happens here.
- Databricks Data + AI Summit June 15β18, 2026 | San Francisco, CA | One of the world’s largest data and AI gatherings with 70,000+ registrants and 700+ sessions. There’s a strong overlap with the enterprise data and AI engineering audience. Topics include data governance, AI pipelines, Unity Catalog, and open-source AI tooling.
- KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America November 9β12, 2026 | Salt Lake City, UT | The North American edition of KubeCon, you can expect MCP-in-production discussions, security sessions, and cloud-native AI integration content. This event is particularly relevant for enterprise IT and platform engineering audiences.
ποΈ Enterprise AI Strategy
These vendor-neutral forums are for decision-makers, buyers, and leaders building and governing AI at scale.
- Agentic & Applied AI for the Enterprise June 8-10 | Atlanta, GA | A practitioner-first event with four tracks: Enterprise Strategy & Metrics, Orchestration & Lifecycle Management, Governance & Data Foundations, and Human & AI Collaboration. This event focuses on the hard work of moving organizations from AI pilots to scalable, accountable systems.
- The AI Enterprise Conference (Data Science Connect) September 2, 2026 | New York City | Positioned as the nation’s largest enterprise-focused data & AI event, this event targets Fortune 500 data and AI leaders with sessions on operationalizing AI, ROI, and governance. Sessions are practical, rather than theoretical.
- Reuters Events: Momentum AI Austin September 24β25, 2026 | Austin, TX | A tightly curated, 500-person forum built exclusively for enterprise AI decision-makers. Deliberately high-signal, with roundtables and workshops designed for candid peer exchange. This isn’t a mass-attendance expo but rather a more intimate gathering
π‘οΈ Security & Governance Conferences
These conferences are focused on AI risk, compliance, and enterprise security.
- IANS Symposium: MCP Risks & Opportunities February 19, 2026 | Virtual | Security-focused, for IANS clients and invited guests only β no vendor presence. The fact that this event existed at all is a strong signal that CISOs and security researchers are actively analyzing MCP-specific risk.
- RSA Conference March 23β26, 2026 | San Francisco, CA | The world’s largest cybersecurity conference, drawing nearly 44,000 attendees, 730+ speakers, and 650+ exhibitors. In 2026, agentic AI, identity security, and AI governance are dominating the agenda. Notably, the Innovation Sandbox this year features multiple finalists building specifically for AI agent security and governance.
- Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit June 2026 | National Harbor, MD | A strategy-first conference led by Gartner analysts covering AI-driven risk modeling, zero trust, identity-first security, and resilience metrics. Less about tools, more about board-level frameworks and governance roadmaps.
- Infosecurity Europe June 2026 | London | One of the most respected cybersecurity gatherings in the EMEA region, celebrating its 30th anniversary. Combines a large exhibition floor with expert-led tracks on AI defense, cloud security, and identity management. The go-to event for European market reach in this space.
- Black Hat USA August 2026 | Las Vegas, NV | The technically rigorous counterpart to RSA includes deep research sessions, executive tracks, and a focus on emerging attack vectors.
π» Conclusion: Don’t Forget About Local Meetups and Hackathons
If flying out to a big conferences feels overwhelming, look at places like Luma and Meetup.com to find AI community events in your area. There are also virtual options.
The grassroots tier of the AI and MCP ecosystem is often where builders experiment, prototype, and push the protocol forward. New events are being added regularly. Here are just a few notable MCP-related events I found while perusing Luma and Google:
- MCP AI Hackathon β San Francisco | May 1, 2026 | A one-day hackathon focused on building with MCP.
- MCP Official Working Groups – Virtual | The official MCP spec has ongoing working groups that you can join to see where the protocol is headed.
- MCP Lisbon Meetup β A community event focused on enterprise-readiness, auth, and observability for MCP deployments.
- MCP and A2A Hackathon β AWS Edition | May 2, 2026 | Hosted at the AWS Startup Loft SF.
- MCP x CPH (Copenhagen) An ongoing meetup series for the Danish market with a business and technology focus.
And of course, you can always find webinars and educational videos online, including one of our most popular webinars about MCP gateways.
