#Japan #Tokyo #AI Agents #Platform Engineering #Kaspar von Grünberg

Rethinking Platforms for the AI Agent Era: Platform Engineering Kaigi 2026

The general association, Cloud Native Innovators Association, has announced the upcoming event, Platform Engineering Kaigi 2026, scheduled for September 26, 2026, at the Nakano Central Park Conference (offering both in-person and online hybrid participation).

This year’s focus is on AI Native Platform Engineering, with a keynote presentation by Kaspar von Grünberg, a renowned expert in Platform Engineering and the author of Thinking in Platforms. This conference is one of the largest in Japan dedicated to Platform Engineering, aiming to explore the evolving landscape of software development as influenced by AI agents.

The Transformation of Development Practices

The past year has seen rapid changes in the development field, particularly since the last Platform Engineering Kaigi in 2025. Teams now routinely rely on AI agents to handle a significant portion of coding tasks. However, simply placing agents on existing platforms often leads to complications such as hallucinations, unchecked costs, and security issues. As a result, some organizations have concluded that agent-based development is not suitable for them; these failures stem more from platform limitations than from the capabilities of the models themselves.

There is a growing need to re-evaluate the internal developer portals and golden paths that were designed to reduce cognitive workload for human developers. What is the next evolution beyond these platforms?

The Theme: AI Native Platform Engineering

As part of the Platform Engineering Kaigi 2026, the central question posed is: what should come after platforms aimed at reducing human cognitive burden? Is the next step a platform that allows AI agents to operate autonomously with robust governance? Or perhaps a platform enabling rapid onboarding through AI? The conference aims to address these inquiries through a series of keynote speeches, open call sessions, sponsor sessions, and interactive live experiments that dive into the future of platforms in the AI era.

Keynote Speaker: Kaspar von Grünberg

The event will feature insights from Kaspar von Grünberg, the founder of PlatformCon and Humanitec. His contribution to this conference provides an exceptional opportunity to hear directly from a leader who has shaped the global movements in Platform Engineering.

In the session titled Architecting Agentic Development Platforms, von Grünberg plans to highlight the reasons behind the common failures associated with agent implementation, attributing them not to the models but to the platforms used. He will present three crucial layers that constitute the Agentic Development Platform: tooling, paths, and agent infrastructure. Additionally, he will guide teams on how to start building functional Internal Developer Platforms (IDP).

Introduction to Live Experiment: “Platform City”

A live experiment titled “Platform City” will demonstrate the concept of AI Native Platform that the organizing committee aims to build. Participants are welcomed to take part in deploying applications using AI coding agents. The first 100 on-site attendees will get the chance to create applications that will collectively shape a metaphorical “city.” This event will showcase what is essential and what may falter in the platform of the AI age through tangible experience rather than theory.

What Participants Will Learn

Attendees can expect to gain practical insights into constructing platforms designed for AI agents, learn from examples of platform engineering from startups to large enterprises, and discover specific approaches to balance governance and security with development speed. Conversations with platform engineers from Japan and abroad will further enrich the experience.

Additional Session Highlights:

• - Designing Platform Services Without AI Slop: How to Measure Value Hypotheses and Effects?
• - Fast Prototyping Infrastructure “Arca” During the AI Era at Mercari
• - Real-world Operations Across Multi-cloud and On-premises with Over 1000 GPUs
• - Introduction to SRE Agents with HolmesGPT: Assigning AI to Investigate Platform Failures
• - Transitioning 1,500 Non-engineers to Safely Innovate with a Golden Path and Guardrails
• - Learning from spanner-autoscaler about CRD Design Patterns: Balancing Automation and Emergency Responses
• - Building a Self-service Observability Infrastructure with OpenTelemetry

Event Overview

• - Name: Platform Engineering Kaigi 2026
• - Theme: AI Native Platform Engineering
• - Date: September 26, 2026 (10:00 AM - 6:15 PM, Networking 6:45 PM - 8:00 PM)
• - Venue: Nakano Central Park Conference, Tokyo
• - Format: Hybrid (In-person + Online)
• - Expected Attendees: Platform engineers, SREs, infrastructure engineers, application developers

Participation Fees:

• - In-person (General): 4,000 JPY (2,000 JPY Early Bird until August 26)
• - In-person (U25): 2,000 JPY (1,000 JPY Early Bird until August 26)
• - Online Participation: Free

Registration Information

Please register in advance via the official website: Platform Engineering Kaigi 2026

Organizers and Sponsors

The event is organized by the Cloud Native Innovators Association with sponsorship from various companies including Amazon Web Services Japan, Mercari, SoftBank, and many others.

For more information about the Cloud Native Innovators Association and their initiatives, visit their website: Cloud Native Innovators Association.