The Best of KubeCon 2026 in Amsterdam: More Signal, Less Blind Spot

KubeCon 2026 in Amsterdam brought together the cloud-native community for a few days of big ideas, practical demos, and a clear message: Kubernetes observability is still evolving, and the market is moving fast toward deeper, simpler, and more scalable visibility.

Across the event, a few themes stood out. The first was the continuing growth of cloud-native complexity. As Kubernetes environments expand across multiple clusters, teams, regions, and platforms, the old approach of stitching together fragmented tools is no longer enough. Observability needs to go deeper into the stack, be easier to deploy, and deliver answers faster.

The second big theme was the rise of AI-assisted operations. Teams are looking for ways to reduce toil, cut through alert noise, and get to root cause faster. Whether the discussion was about better telemetry, richer context, or smarter automation, one thing was consistent: people want observability that helps them act, not just look.

The third theme was the increasing importance of open standards and flexible instrumentation. OpenTelemetry continues to play a central role in the cloud-native ecosystem, and the conversation has clearly shifted from “should we adopt OTel?” to “how do we extend it further and make it work in more places with less effort?”

Splunk’s Contribution: OBI at the Center of the Conversation

One of the most exciting parts of the event for us was the attention around OBI, or OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation.

OBI represents an important step forward for Kubernetes observability because it brings together two powerful ideas: the openness and portability of OpenTelemetry, and the depth and efficiency of eBPF. The result is a new way to collect telemetry from Kubernetes environments without requiring heavy application changes or complex manual instrumentation.

For teams running modern cloud-native platforms, that matters. A lot.

With OBI, Splunk Observability can help teams gain visibility with less friction, especially in environments where traditional instrumentation is difficult to roll out or maintain. Instead of asking developers to instrument every service by hand, OBI can help surface telemetry closer to the runtime layer, giving teams faster time to value and broader coverage across workloads.

Why OBI Matters for Splunk Observability

OBI is especially valuable because it helps address some of the most persistent challenges in Kubernetes monitoring:

• Faster deployment: Less manual instrumentation means teams can start seeing value sooner.
• Broader coverage: OBI helps capture telemetry even in environments where code-level changes are hard to scale.
• Deeper visibility: eBPF provides strong runtime insight, helping uncover issues that are otherwise hard to detect.
• Better context for troubleshooting: When paired with Splunk Observability, OBI adds richer signal to help teams move from symptom to cause more quickly.
• Lower operational overhead: Less instrumentation complexity means less time spent maintaining the observability pipeline and more time solving real problems.

In other words, OBI helps make observability more scalable, more practical, and more aligned with how modern Kubernetes teams actually work.

A Strong Signal for the Future

KubeCon 2026 made one thing clear: the future of observability is not just about collecting more data. It is about collecting the right data, from the right place, with the least possible friction, and turning it into action faster.

That is exactly why OBI is such an exciting part of the Splunk Observability story. It combines the openness of OpenTelemetry with the power of eBPF to help teams go deeper into Kubernetes without adding unnecessary complexity.

For organizations operating cloud-native systems at scale, that’s a meaningful step forward.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth, joined the conversations, shared their Kubernetes observability challenges, and spent time with the team. We loved the great discussions, the live demos, and of course the fun with Trace Invader.

And congratulations again to our lucky Nintendo Switch 2 and Stormtrooper helmet winners - we hope you enjoy your prizes as much as we enjoyed the energy at the booth.

See you at the next event,

Stephane