Your Guide to KubeCon London in 2025

6 min readFeb 17, 2025

I attended many KubeCon and CloudNativeCon events in the past. In fact, since 2019, I have gone to every edition in Europe (except the COVID years), and last year, I had the opportunity to go to Salt Lake City, North America.

So, I put together this guide with my experience to help you navigate KubeCon. You will find practical information about the event here, what happens in and around KubeCon, and how to make the most of it.

Whether it’s your first time or you have been to KubeCon, you should find something helpful in this article. While this post focuses on the upcoming edition at the time of publication (KubeCon Europe in London 2025), the event tips and tricks should work for other editions.

Throughout the article, I will highlight what’s new in 2025 in Bold, so if you are attending KubeCon for your N-time, you should be able to spot the new details quickly.

Event details

KubeCon and CloudNativeCon (The full name of the event) are two or four-day events. The size and duration vary per location and time of year. The event has changed this over the years, but in 2025, there are five main events:

What’s new this year in 2025? This year, KubeCon India will host its second edition (the first big KubeCon was last year), and Japan will host its first edition. Both countries have had some versions of KubeDay (Single Day) and KCD (Community driven) events.

Registration

KubeCon is notoriously expensive. Tickets range from 200$ for academic participants to 2278$ for late bird corporate tickets. But don’t get scared. There are ways you can make your experience affordable:

Choose the correct ticket type: You might be overwhelmed by the complex table when you land on the registration page. Early and Late Bird. All Access vs KubeCon Only. Academic, Individual, and Corporate prices…etc. Luckily, if you scroll down a bit, you should see details about each. Here is a quick recap:

All Access vs. KubeCon Only (Applicable to EU and NA): All Access includes CNCF-hosted co-located events hosted on the event's first day (These are single-day events with a specific topic; you can check the details for London here). KubeCon Only doesn’t include the colocated events.
All Access vs Day Pass (Applicable to China): KubeCon China is the only event offering a Day Pass this year. You can only attend day one of day two or both with the All Access Pass.
Academic: If you are a full-time student. You will need to prove that with a valid student ID.
Corporate: If your company pays for your ticket.
Individual: If you are not affiliated with a company or work for a non-profit.

Convince your boss. The website has a sample letter you can send to your manager or boss to explain the value of such an event. Many companies consider events as training and usually have the budget for that.

Scholarships: The CNCF offers many scholarship opportunities to cover the tickets and sometimes the cost of travel and accommodation. Make sure to check and apply for these early (Unfortunately, for London in 2025, the applications are closed).

Discounts: If you read this article before Feb 19, use my discount code ABDEL_30 for 30% off any pass type for KubeCon London 2025 🎉.

Co-Located Events

Co-located events (Or co-los for short) are single-day and usually single-track events on day one. For London, that's Tuesday, April 1st. Each colo event has a specific topic or theme. There are two categories of Co-located events:

CNCF Hosted: Hosted by the CNCF, vendor agnostic, and usually community-driven. They occur at the same venue as KubeCon and are included in the All Access pass. For London, you can find the schedule here.
Sponsor Hosted: Hosted by the event sponsors on the day before or after KubeCon. They take place outside the event venue, and you usually have to sign up separately to be able to attend. The schedule for these is here.

There is also a very cool event called Cloud Native Rejekts. It started to allow those who did not get their talks accepted for KubeCon to submit a session at this event. It usually takes place over the Sunday-Monday before KubeCon, and the tickets are generally free, but they get sold out quickly. So make sure to register. Cloud Native Rejekts is a great way to ease yourself into the craziness of KubeCon and meet cool people from the community.

Conf Parties

Since KubeCon attracts many people (Rumors say London will see 15k attendees), there are tons of parties organized by sponsors around the central venue/city hosting the event. Some folks put together this incredible website that lists all these parties and how to sign up.

Main event

The main KubeCon usually kicks off on Wednesday. It starts with Keynotes, then the show floor opens up, and the breakout talks start rolling out. Here are some practical information to make your experience worthwhile:

Make sure to pick up your badge the day before the event. This way, you can avoid the rush of Day 1 (Exp: For London, badge Pick-up is available from Monday, March 31st. Ctrl+F on the schedule for details)
Make sure to show up early to the Day 1 keynote if you want to attend it. The room fills quickly, and organizers might send people to an overflow room where you can see the livestream.
Show up to your breakout room early. Popular talks get filled up quickly, and the organizers stop admitting people once the room is full. Most talks are indeed recorded and available on YouTube, but if you want to ask questions and interact with the speakers, make sure to secure your seat.
The solutions showcase (aka exhibitors hall) opens at specific hours. Check the schedule for details (Exp: London).

Do Not miss these!

Project Pavilion Tour: The project pavilion is a corner of the solutions showcase floor where various CNCF projects have booths, maintainers, or community members who can discuss their projects. CNCF Ambassadors and staff members organize tours of the pavilion, where they do introductions and explain how it works. If you want to ask questions about a specific project, this is your opportunity. The tours take place every day and multiple times per day. Make sure to check the schedule.

CLBO: ClashLoopBackOff: A friendly competition where two people go head to head against each other and try to solve a challenge the host presents genuinely and creatively. It’s a lot of fun!

🎉 #KubeCrawl + #CloudNativeFest: End of the day on Wednesday, you can enjoy food and drinks and walk around the showcase floor to speak to sponsors, community members, and organizers.

To Conclude

KubeCon is a massive, busy, overwhelming, and, at the same time, fast event. Don’t worry if you feel like it ended before it even started. Try to make the most out of it, enjoy the experience, meet as many people as possible, and be prepared to walk a lot. Happy #KubeCon :)