At most conferences, the labs are an afterthought. At #GrafanaCON they're a reason to go!

This year there are six hands-on labs running, and they're exactly what they sound like. You're building things and making progress.

What's available:
🔸 Shift left with reliability testing: A hands-on introduction to k6
🔸 Getting started with OpenTelemetry instrumentation: A practical playbook
🔸 Alloy in action: Build telemetry pipelines with OpenTelemetry and Prometheus
🔸 Dashboarding 101: Best practices to build and edit Grafana dashboards
🔸 AI inception: Using AI to build a Grafana plugin that uses AI
🔸 Advanced dashboarding: Build and manage dynamic Grafana dashboards at scale

Labs are limited capacity with group discounts up to 40% off. Grab your spot: https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/hands-on-labs/

👏 The #GrafanaCON 2026 agenda is now live.

Open observability highlights
• Grafana 13
• Loki’s new storage engine
• Alloy's new OpenTelemetry engine
• k6 2.0
• Actually useful AI and building AI agents

Use case highlights:
• Observability at the LEGO Group
• Ocean conservation at DIGI4ECO with Grafana, robotics, and AI
• Building a railway monitoring platform with Grafana at The Irish Rail
• Observability for LLM inference
• Business observability at Drive Terra (from e-bike battery health to inventory)
• Monitoring distributed services at the Python Software Foundation

Plus... hands-on labs, an interactive AI demo station 🆕, community party, Ask the Experts booth, and the Science Fair.

Tickets AND hands-on labs are 30% off. See the agenda and register before we reach capacity: https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/agenda/

#GrafanaCON 2026 early bird tickets have sold out, but 30% discount tickets are still available!

See the latest updates in #Grafana, #Prometheus #OpenTelemetry, and other projects in the OSS observability ecosystem.

Save on your registration AND hands-on labs: https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/

I am running the science fair for #GrafanaCon in April again, and just accepted an external submission for a 1:90 working model of an #offshore #windfarm turbine on a OC4 semi-submersible platform.

I know some of those words!

It's insane how many cool things I get to see through #Grafana, and sometimes I can even talk about them!

🌎 Bring a #GrafanaCON Local meetup to your city! We’re looking for community hosts and speakers for this meetup series coming up in May and June.

The GrafanaCON Local meetups will happen globally through our Grafana & Friends meetup groups. Scheduling is dependent upon confirming hosts and speakers — with applications reviewed on a rolling basis.

Submit your application from now until April 10: https://grafana.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4OQ9dzUAbSHfrAG

The last day to submit your #GrafanaCON talk is quickly approaching!

Tell us about your plugins, dashboards, best practices, or that one unexpected use case that delighted you.

Speakers get free entry to GrafanaCON and a speaker gathering. Apply: https://pretalx.com/grafanacon-2026/cfp

2025 was full of standout moments for Grafana Labs and our #opensource community.

From launching launching #Grafana 12 and donating Beyla to OpenTelemetry to hosting our first-ever #GrafanaCON Science Fair with plenty of clever #IoT creations — thank you all for being a part of it!

https://grafana.com/blog/2025/12/11/grafana-labs-top-10-moments-of-2025/

🎤 The #GrafanaCON 2026 #CFP is officially open, and we want your talk!

Tell the community about your plugins, dashboards, best practices, or that one unexpected-but-awesome use case.

We welcome:
• First-time speakers
• Hands-on practitioners
• OSS contributors
• Folks building with Prometheus, Loki, Mimir, OTel, Alloy, and anything within the Big Tent ecosystem

Speakers get free entry to GrafanaCON and a fun speaker gathering.

Apply by 19 Jan: https://pretalx.com/grafanacon-2026/cfp

🇪🇸 #GrafanaCON 2026 is heading to Barcelona, Spain from 20-22 Apr!

Get ready to feel on tapas the world at our biggest community conference of the year.

This conference goes beyond #Grafana. It’s also about all of the other open source projects in our ecosystem (#OpenTelemetry, #Prometheus, Loki, etc.), plus related data source plugins and collectors.

Sign up to receive notifications when 30% discount tickets go on sale: https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/?mdm=social&src=ma

Dinner and a walk through a park festival at day 0 of #confconf in #Sofia, #Bulgaria

Just in those photos you see people who made #FOSDEM, #DENOG, #DebConf, #PromCon, #GrafanaCon, #CCC / #38c3, #WHY2025, #IndiaFOSS, #COSCUP, #FOSSASIA, and others happen. And more people will come tomorrow.

We're looking to have a packed agenda over this coming weekend, and I will try and do my best to update this thread with tidbits and information.