You did it! You set a new record. CloudFest 2026 saw 10,900 attendees show up and take over Europa-Park. To make this happen, we had to actually build more festival space—and now we’re wondering if WebPros Cloud Pavilion was even big enough.
The international internet infrastructure community came together to explore The Sustainability of Everything, which is a big theme. Approached from results-oriented angles such as cybersecurity, compliance, AI, and corporate IT strategies, the theme became more manageable and more fun to explore.
We also introduced the industry’s only ROI-focused gathering of Web Agencies, service providers, and commercial WordPress professionals: WP [Business & Agency] Summit. This is the evolution of what started out as WP Day, and then WP Day and Agency Day. It has transformed into a beautiful butterfly, taking over two massive spaces in Europa-Park’s theme hotels to address the practical issues on the agency side, provider side, and technical side that require cross-silo collaboration to solve.
CloudFest 2026 by the Numbers
Let’s look at some hard data… because data doesn’t lie.
Attendees: 10,900
Speakers: 233
Partners: Also 233
Time Spent at Booths: 1,078,072 minutes
Total Meetings Held in Networking Areas: 2,380
Alphornbläsers Blowing Huge Horns: 12
New Tattoos Inked: 62
Percentage of Tattoos That Were Real: 100%
Umbrellas Taken Home by Attendees Against Our Specific Instructions: Too many
Banana Plants in WebPros Cloud Pavilion: 100
Banana Plants Taken Home by the Team: [REDACTED]
Beer Consumed During BierFest: Germany facing a shortage crisis
Seeing the deep conversations taking place all over the venue, from early morning until much too late at night, was perhaps the best indicator that things were going well during our most ambitious festival yet.
Video Recap
It is always hard to pick our favorite moments from CloudFest, but the 2026 edition seemed especially full of magic. Even the rain (which has somehow never happened during festival hours at CloudFest for at least eight years) did not stop anyone from exploring the stages, lounges, meeting area, and Cloud Fair exhibition area. (We would like some of those umbrellas back, though…)
CloudFest in Pictures
Some moments are best captured in freeze-frame, so here are just some of the many, many, many) photos we took during CloudFest 2026. Do you see yourself in any of these images?
Check out all CloudFest 2026 photos!
Sessions For Everyone
The CloudFest community loves data, and the very first session of the week was at the WP [Business and Agency] Summit. James Lee from WebPros shared a feast of WordPress hosting statistics. Here’s just a taste:
· 1,1000 hosters compete for 100 million WordPress sites
· The top 5 providers control 47% of the market
· 19% of customers leave after a security incident
At the main event, domain-name data geeks also had a banquet of business intelligence on the .com Stage, thanks to Andy Simpson from Verisign. Andy shared a deep dive into how existing and new domain name registrants are taking advantage of AI. His graphs showing the spike in Bolt and Loveable domain registrations left no doubt about where the market is heading.
Meanwhile, the NameStudio API Stage was the place to be for a wide range of insights. One highlight was hearing Sarah Chen Lin from MiTac Computing explain how water-cooling systems were capturing 95% of the heat generated by a client’s servers. Water exits at 60 deg C and is cooled by heating a swimming pool via a continuous closed circuit. Cool, right?
MSPs are a growing part of the CloudFest community, and they got to sample some fresh statistics in the WebPros Cloud Pavilion. Our data analysis lead, Dr. Brooke Edge from Open Eye Partners, shared highlights from the most recent State of the MSP Industry Report. Did you know that MSPs partnerships have jumped from 24% to 32% in just three months? The message that “you can’t do it alone” is one that will resonate for all of us.
And this was really cool: that each session in the WebPros Cloud Pavilion was a “silent disco”… everyone got a wireless set of earphones to ensure perfect sound without the PA distracting from the business at the booths. Our custom-built space was crowded throughout the festival, so this became quite important
The final sessions of the festival were perhaps the most profound. Internet Hall of Famers Radia Perlman, Ram Mohan, and Brewster Kahle each shared insights and stories from their pioneering work: achievements that many of us now, even in this industry, can sometimes take for granted. Their humility, dedication, and innovative thinking were inspiring.
More to Come
CloudFest is a year-round experience, so be sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter: you’ll not only get free ticket offers, but also our quarterly State of the Cloud business intelligence report, access to free webinars, and the heads-up when new podcast episodes go live.
Registration for MSP GLOBAL 2026 is now open: October 21-22 at PortAventura theme park in Barcelona. This one’s for MSPs and the partners who love them as the industry tackles the theme of Serve Your Ecosystem. MSPs, MSSPs, resellers, systems integrators, and corporate IT managers can register for free while those tickets last right here.
Oh, and save the dates for CloudFest 2027: March 15-18 at Europa-Park. Registration will open sooner than you expect!
