Your guide to GrafanaCON 2025: Choose your own adventure in Seattle

• 2025-04-24 • 6 min

GrafanaCON 2025 is right around the corner!

Join us May 6-8 in Seattle for our largest community gathering yet, focused on all things Grafana and its extended open source ecosystem. We’re excited to announce that Firefly Aerospace will be presenting a session on how they used Grafana to monitor spacecraft systems during their monumental mission to the moon. They’ll join EA Apps, Dropbox, and more to talk about their Grafana use cases and show off some cool dashboards.

Come for the technical deep dives, live demos, and exciting announcements. Stay for the one-of-a-kind networking opportunities you can’t find anywhere else.

Haven’t registered yet? There’s still time — and we have group discounts available. Save 20% with a group of 3+ and save 10% when you bring a friend.

Already registered? Amazing. Here’s everything you need to know to make the most out of your GrafanaCON experience.

Step 1: Confirm your ticket and travel plans

Once you’ve registered, check your inbox for a confirmation email from events@grafana.com — no need to print it out; just bring it on your device.

From there, it’s time to start planning your trip to Seattle. Sidenote: As the head of Developer Programs and Community here at Grafana Labs, I’ve traveled a lot — and Seattle is my all-time favorite city.

The event will take place at McCaw Hall, a performing arts center that is easy to get to (just look for the Space Needle!). Parking is available at the Mercer Street Garage, located directly across the street. We’ve listed public transit options in our FAQ if you prefer to take the monorail or bus.

Pro tip: Registration opens on Tuesday, May 6, from 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Beat the crowds on Wednesday by grabbing your badge early!

Step 2: Plan your one-of-a-kind conference experience

With 32 live sessions, our Ask the Experts booth, the first-ever GrafanaCON Science Fair, and even a night at the museum, there’s something for everyone at GrafanaCON 2025. Here’s a closer look at what makes this year’s agenda so unique.

💻 Hands-on labs

One of the top requests from last year? More hands-on learning. That’s why GrafanaCON will kick off with a full day of deep-dive, three-hour labs on Tuesday, May 6, led by our engineering teams.

Morning sessions:

Afternoon sessions:

Note: Tickets for hands-on labs can only be purchased with a conference ticket. Learn more on our GrafanaCON 2025 hands-on labs web page.

☕ Birds of a Feather discussions

These small-group, informal discussions will run from 8:00–8:45 AM on May 7 and 8. No registration needed — just show up to connect with other attendees and discuss some of the topics that matter most to you.

Wednesday, May 7:

Women & gender minorities
Grafana Champions & community organizers

Thursday, May 8:

Grafana & OpenTelemetry
Databases: Tempo, Pyroscope, Mimir, Loki

🎤 Technical deep dives and community-led sessions

The GrafanaCON 2025 agenda features technical talks led by both Grafana Labs experts and members of our OSS community. You can bookmark the full GrafanaCON agenda for the complete session-line up and schedule, but here are a few can’t-miss moments:

From Grafana Labs:

Opening keynote: Learn about some exciting updates to our open source projects.
Grafana 12 deep dive: Get an up-close look at the latest major release of your favorite dashboarding tool.
k6 1.0: How this long-awaited major release makes it easier to get started with testing: See demos of new features in the open source load testing tool.
Without a trace (query): Troubleshooting simplified with Tempo and Traces Drilldown in Grafana: Learn how Traces Drilldown in Grafana, powered by Grafana Tempo, can simplify complex troubleshooting (no queries required).

From the community:

🆕 Dashboards to the moon: Grafana’s role in Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission operations: On March 2, 2025, Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to complete a fully successful soft landing on the moon with Blue Ghost Mission 1. Join Jesus Charles, Blue Ghost Mission 1 Flight Director, for an inside look at the mission, the operations team, and the critical role Grafana played in monitoring spacecraft systems.
Did the apple fall far from the tree? Monitoring an off-grid family orchard: Learn how Arthur Kepler’s work as a site reliability engineer helped him build a remotely managed monitoring system for an orchard.
How Grafana helps passenger satisfaction take flight at Schiphol Airport: DevOps engineer Gerard van Engelen will share how PXP leverages Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, Alloy, and Faro to enable real-time, data-driven insights into system performance and user interactions.
Monitoring EA App’s 200+ core error metrics with a scalable, color-coded Grafana dashboard: In this session, EA Software Developer Kenny Chen walks through how his team built a Grafana dashboard that client teams can use to monitor 200+ core error metrics.
Loki at Dropbox: Strategies for reliable petabyte-scale logging: Infrastructure Software Engineer Chris Hodges will share hard-won lessons from scaling Grafana Loki to manage multi-petabyte unstructured logs for 1,000+ services at Dropbox.

🤝 The hallway track (back and better than ever)

GrafanaCON 2025 offers a ton of opportunities to connect with fellow members of the open source community in fun and unique ways.

Ask the Experts booth: Bring your toughest technical questions and chat directly with GrafanaCON speakers after their sessions.
Science Fair: Interact with projects demonstrating all the different things you can monitor with Grafana, and get a closer look at Grafana Labs hackathon projects like Doomfana and Dash Dash Revolution.
Community Lounge: Hang out and learn about contributing to our global Grafana community (including meetups).
Sponsor booths: Connect with GrafanaCON sponsors including ClickHouse, Embrace, Tailscale, and Instabug.

🎉 The community party at the Museum of Pop Culture

On May 7 at 6:30 PM, join us at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), which is just a short walk from the venue. Enjoy food, drinks, and great conversation with fellow attendees, sponsors, and Grafana Labs team members.

Note: conference badge required for entry to this event, which is sponsored by AWS.

🌟 Other agenda highlights

In addition, be sure to check out:

The Golden Grot Awards: We’ll showcase the top three dashboards in each category (professional and personal), and celebrate the grand prize winners on stage.
“Grafana’s Big Tent” podcast — Live! Join us for a fun conversation about extreme home labs and DIY IoT in this live recording of your favorite observability podcast.
T-shirt printing station: No GrafanaCON event is complete without some swag. Choose your own design and take home a custom souvenir.

Final tips before you go

Lastly, here are a few other tips to keep in mind as you head to GrafanaCON 2025:

Quiet spaces: If you’re an introvert like me — or just need a quiet space to catch up on some emails — you’ll be happy to know the lab rooms will be converted into quiet spaces during the conference days.
Food and coffee: Light breakfast, seated lunches, and coffee stations (on every floor!) will be provided.
Be kind: Our Code of Conduct ensures a safe, inclusive space for everyone — reach out to conduct@grafana.com or find our on-site staff to learn more.

We can’t wait to see you in Seattle! You’ll probably catch me making the rounds at every stand in the Science Fair, especially the Bird Drilldown stand — because who could forget last year’s Obirdability session?

Let’s make it the best GrafanaCON yet. ✨