Your guide to GrafanaCON 2026 in Barcelona

Oh my Gaudi, GrafanaCON 2026 in Barcelona is almost here. 

Join us 20–22 April for our largest community conference that celebrates Grafana and its extended open source ecosystem, including the standards, projects, and people that create our vibrant community. There will be technical deep dives from Google, LEGO, and more, alongside hands-on demos of the latest AI tools. Plus the GrafanaCON Science Fair is back with new hackathon projects to try out. (Did someone say ping-pong?)

Haven’t registered yet? There’s still time. Group discounts start at 20% for two people and go up to 40% for groups of five or more.

If you're already registered, we can't wait to see you. Here’s how to make the most of your GrafanaCON experience.

Step 1: Confirm your ticket and travel plans

Before you arrive, check your inbox for your ticket confirmation from events@grafana.com. No need to print anything; just show your email on your device.

The event is at Palau de Congressos de Catalunya, Av. Diagonal 661, Les Corts, 08028 Barcelona. Transit and venue details are in the FAQ. If you need a place to stay, there are still rooms available at a discounted rate at the Torre Melina, a Gran Meliá Hotel, which is a two-minute walk from the conference. Book here. 

Pro tip: Badge pickup officially opens the day before the conference starts on Monday, 20 April, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Come early to avoid the lines and you'll be ready when the main program opens Tuesday with the opening keynote at 9:00 a.m.

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

With 30+ sessions, Ask the Experts, the Science Fair, Birds of a Feather, and a community party, there’s something for everyone. Bookmark the full GrafanaCON agenda for the complete schedule. Here are some of the highlights:

Hands-on labs

Monday is dedicated to hands-on labs led by Grafana Labs engineers. We have a few slots still open through 16 April for the following labs: 

• OpenTelemetry: Send metrics, logs, and traces to the open source Grafana LGTM Stack 
• Actually Useful AI: Use AI to build a Grafana plugin that uses AI
• Alloy: Telemetry pipelines with an OpenTelemetry-style collector and Prometheus pipelines

Hands-on labs require a separate ticket in addition to a regular conference pass. For more details, check out the Hands-on labs page. 

Technical deep dives and community-led sessions

The conference kicks off on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. with the opening keynote, where Grafana Labs Co-founder and CEO Raj Dutt and Co-founder and CGO Torkel Ödegaard and the Grafana Labs engineering team will reveal major announcements around our open source projects, AI developments, and, of course, we'll unveil what’s new in Grafana 13. (P.S. The keynote is livestreamed so teammates back home can watch.)

Over the two-day GrafanaCON conference, there will be more than 30 sessions where you can check out the latest updates in open source observability and learn from real use cases from the wider community. Here's a glimpse of what's in store: 

Sessions from Grafana Labs 

• Grafana 13 deep dive: Operate at scale, flexible dashboards, faster answers  
• Inside Loki’s new architecture: Log insights at petabyte scale  
• Alloy’s OpenTelemetry engine: Collector YAML and native OTel pipelines in Grafana  
• Scaling Grafana Assistant: Give AI agents the right context so teams can move faster from signals to action in Grafana  
• Grafana Alerting: One unified engine and multi-team notification policies
• k6 2.0: What’s new for load testing and reliability  

Sessions from the community 

• Google: Less toil, stronger incident response, planet-scale dashboards  
• The LEGO Group: Observability when platform teams empower builders  
• DIGI4ECO: Oceans, robotics, AI, and Grafana for restoration telemetry  
• Irish Rail: A 180-year-old railway on how it modernized with an open monitoring platform

Plus Drive Terra, Python Software Foundation, ESNet, and more! Check out the GrafanaCON agenda for a full rundown of all the talks. 

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.

The hallway track

There's also a lot to take part in outside of the main stage. This is when you get to connect with Grafana Labs experts and community members and where that napkin sketch may transform into your next PR. 

• Science Fair: Play with popular projects from the community and our annual Grafana Labs hackathons, ranging from monitoring 3D printers to tracking ping-pong rallies.
• Ask the Experts: Get your questions answered by the engineers and pros behind Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo, Alloy, k6, and more.
• Birds of a Feather: Drop into informal yet impactful small-group conversations around timely topics, including Alloy and OpenTelemetry, actually useful AI, alerting, diversity and allyship in tech, and more.
• The community party: Join us on Tuesday, 21 April at 6:00 p.m. for an evening of food, drinks, and conversations with fellow attendees. Badge required. 

And for those who just may need to take a break from all the action (or need to check emails or Slack), there will also be quiet spaces throughout the venue to recharge on both conference days. 

Step 3: Final tips to keep in mind

We aim to make the GrafanaCON a positive experience for all attendees. Our Code of Conduct ensures a safe, inclusive space for everyone — reach out to report-conduct@grafana.com or find our on-site staff to learn more.

If you and your team are still interested in attending, there are group discounts available in the final week leading up to the conference with up to 40% tickets for group of 5 or more. Check out the GrafanaCON site for more information. 

We'll see you in Barcelona.