QCon San Francisco 2026

QCon San Francisco is the November edition of the long-running QCon series from C4Media, the company behind InfoQ, aimed at senior engineers, architects and tech leads. The 2026 edition has three conference days, 16 to 18 November, at the Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero, followed by two optional days of half-day and full-day hands-on training on 19 and 20 November. There is no track called DevOps, but several of the twelve curated tracks are squarely about running systems: distributed systems in production, resilience engineering, real-world platform engineering, developer experience, data platforms, and the long-running architectures-you've-always-wondered-about track, alongside several on AI and ML systems. There is no open call for papers: a programme committee and track hosts invite practitioner speakers, and sponsored talks are kept apart from the editorial programme, which is why the content tends to be candid. The organiser's media kit puts attendance at 700 to 800. It is expensive: conference-only passes are $2,995 until 10 November and $3,250 after, rising to $4,685 with two training days, though a $590 video-only pass exists. Passes include a year of on-demand recordings, and many talks later appear free on InfoQ. Best for senior engineers who want depth over breadth.