We’re going to CloudFest 2026 and here’s why

CloudFest is one of the few events in our industry that doesn’t feel like a chore... You still get the serious stuff, long talks about security, compliance, infrastructure and the business side of hosting, but it happens at Europa-Park in Rust, Germany. That setting changes people. Conversations get more honest and less polished, which is what we actually want.

So yes, we’re going to CloudFest 2026 (March 23 to 26) and we’ll be around all week. If you’re going too and you want to grab a coffee and compare notes, reach out. The official event page is here if you’re planning travel or tickets: CloudFest 2026 event details.

CloudFest has its own rhythm and you don’t fully get it until you’ve done a full week there, including the late nights where half the useful connections happen by accident.

What CloudFest felt like in 2025

CloudFest 2025 had the theme “The Human Edge” and it ended up being more relevant than it sounds on paper. The AI buzz was already loud, but you could feel a shift in the room. People were trying to figure out where AI helps in real operations and where it just adds noise. CloudFest published their own recap if you want the official version, but I’m going to stick to what we noticed on the ground.

The easiest way to describe last year is “high energy with a lot of context switching”. You’d be in a hallway talk about abuse handling and incident response, then five minutes later you’re outside watching people throw servers for sport, then you’re back inside talking about data storage economics and why everyone has strong opinions about NVMe.

It sounds silly, but the weird parts are part of the point. People relax and you get real answers.

A few things from 2025 that stuck with us:

• Keynotes sparked hallway debates. Cory Doctorow’s talk got referenced constantly after it happened, not just as a “cool keynote” but as a frame for how platforms and marketplaces get worse over time. You could see providers mapping that idea onto hosting, billing, support, abuse pipelines, all of it.
• Security conversations stopped being optional. You didn’t need to go looking for them. Even in casual chats, people were swapping stories about patching windows, supply chain worries and what they do when a customer VM turns into a problem at 2 AM.
• The WordPress and agency crowd matters more than people admit. The day zero program pulls in a lot of agencies and product teams, and it’s a good reminder that hosting isn’t only about infrastructure people talking to infrastructure people.

CloudFest also does the “theme park thing” properly. Rollercoasters are open. People actually ride them. You end up having a business conversation right after someone got off Blue Fire or Silver Star and they’re still slightly out of breath. That sounds chaotic, but it’s weirdly effective for breaking the small talk loop.

What’s new at CloudFest 2026

CloudFest 2026 has a few concrete changes and they’re not small. The one you’ll hear about first is CloudFest Village, which is basically an expansion area with more space for side events and meetups. It also includes the Server Throwing Arena and the new Street Food Festival.

The floorplan is changing too. With roughly 10,000 attendees expected, more space and better navigation is not a luxury, it’s survival. The event is pushing the app for wayfinding and honestly that’s good advice even if you usually ignore conference apps.

Two additions we’re personally happy about:

• More casual seating areas. You don’t always want a formal meeting. Sometimes you need 15 minutes to talk through a potential partnership without blasting music in the background.
• Food that’s close to the action. This sounds minor until you lose 45 minutes in a line and your whole afternoon schedule collapses.

CloudFest also announced a Podcast Studio concept for media partners. Even if you’re not recording, it usually pulls interesting people into one place, which makes it a useful networking gravity well.

The CloudFest 2026 theme and how we’re interpreting it

The 2026 theme is “The Sustainability of Everything.” That can easily drift into empty talk, so we’re treating it in a boring way on purpose.

For us, sustainability means systems that keep performing over time, teams that can operate without burning out and design decisions that don’t create a mess you have to pay for later.

CloudFest is also switching to five topic tracks instead of daily subthemes. If you want the official framing and track pages, start here.

Cybersecurity and compliance

This track is going to be big for anyone operating infrastructure in Europe. NIS2 is already shaping what customers ask for and how providers document their controls. The EU’s overview page is a good baseline reference: NIS2 directive overview. If you’re a smaller provider, the tricky part is not reading the directive. The tricky part is translating it into routines, evidence and accountability that hold up when someone asks “show me.”

We’re going to look for sessions and people who talk about the ugly details: incident handling, supplier risk, access controls, audit trails and how they keep security work from turning into permanent panic.

AI-powered cloud solutions

AI will show up everywhere again. Some of it will be genuinely useful, especially in ops automation and monitoring. Some of it will be demos that look great until you imagine them running in production with real customers and real consequences.

Our angle is simple: if an automation cannot explain what it did and why, it becomes a liability. We like tools that reduce toil, but we’re picky about failure modes and about who holds the “stop button” when things go sideways.

Corporate IT evolved

This is where a lot of practical expectations come from, even if you’re not selling directly into large enterprises. Procurement rules, security questionnaires and “prove your process” requirements tend to start in corporate IT, then trickle into the rest of the market.

We want to hear how providers are balancing speed and discipline. Fast platforms win, but only if they don’t collapse under their own shortcuts.

Data sovereignty

Data sovereignty is not only a political headline. It’s an operational question. Where is the data stored, who can access it, what logs exist, how are keys handled and what happens when a customer needs proof for their own compliance needs.

As a European provider, this track is naturally interesting to us. We expect a lot of serious conversations here, especially from teams in regulated industries and from providers dealing with cross-border customers.

Finding the future

This track is often where you hear the most honest strategy talk, including the parts people don’t have answers for yet. It’s also where you can spot long-term shifts early, like changes in web economics, platform dependency risks and how search and discovery keeps changing under everyone’s feet.

What we’re looking for as LumaDock

We build VPS infrastructure and we care about the boring fundamentals: consistent performance, predictable networking and security defaults that don’t rely on customers remembering to click the right checkbox. CloudFest is useful because it exposes what other operators are doing, what’s breaking for them and what they’re building next.

Here are some topics we’re actively chasing in 2026:

Security operations

Every provider claims they take security seriously. The difference is routine. How often do you patch, how do you validate changes, what does “done” look like and who gets paged when something weird happens. We want to compare approaches and steal good process ideas, not slogans.

Network controls

Firewall management and DDoS protection are expected now. What matters is how usable it is for real projects. Rules should be easy to audit and easy to change without breaking services. This is a part of our platform we care about a lot.

Storage expectations keep rising

Everyone wants fast disks and they want them to stay fast under pressure. It’s not enough to say “NVMe” anymore. People ask about replication, failure domains, backup strategy and what happens when something breaks. If you’re a provider, you learn quickly that storage is not a feature.

It’s basically your reputation.

Support realities in hosting

Support is where your platform design gets judged in public.

If the panel is confusing, tickets go up. If the product is clear, tickets drop. We pay attention to how other teams are reducing ticket volume without ignoring customers, because nobody wants to scale support headcount forever.

How CloudFest 2025 changed what we do day to day

This is the part most event posts skip, but it’s the only part that matters long-term. After 2025, we went home with a handful of practical changes and reminders.

• We tightened how we talk about security internally. Less “we should improve X” and more “what is the control, who owns it and how do we prove it works.”
• We stopped accepting vague performance claims from vendors. If we can’t measure it and validate it under load, it’s not a real requirement.
• We put more effort into documentation and defaults. A clean default setup saves everyone time, including us.

None of this is glamorous, but it’s the point of going to events like this. You collect reality checks and you bring them home.

What we’ll be doing at CloudFest 2026

We’ll be moving between sessions and the Cloud Fair area and we’ll also be doing what most people do at CloudFest, lots of meetings that start as “quick hellos” and turn into 40-minute deep dives.

If you want to chat about VPS infrastructure, hosting operations, availability zones, compliance pressure or even just who has the best coffee near the exhibition hall, ping us and we’ll find a time.

Practical tips for first-timers in Rust

Well... I’m not going to pretend there’s a perfect plan, but a few simple things help:

• Leave gaps in your schedule. CloudFest is built for spontaneous meetings and you’ll regret booking every slot.
• Use the app for navigation. The site layout is part of the fun, but it’s easy to waste time walking in circles.
• Bring comfortable shoes. Europa-Park is not a convention center, it’s a lot of walking.
• Don’t skip the side events. Even if you only stay for an hour, you’ll meet people you won’t meet inside session rooms.

Let’s meet at CloudFest 2026!

If you’ll be at CloudFest 2026 and you want to connect, message us before the event. Short note is enough, just include the days you’re there and a couple of time windows. We’ll reply and figure out a simple meetup plan.

See you in Rust!