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Microsoft Build is back – and so are we. Last year, we followed Microsoft’s flagship developer conference from the first registration announcement all the way through to the closing sessions. This year, we’re doing it again.
Microsoft Build 2026 takes place June 2–3 in San Francisco, with the keynote and select sessions also streamed online for free. Two days. One city. A conference that has compressed four days of 2025 content into a tighter, more practitioner-focused format — and made its ambitions very clear with its tagline: Real code. Real systems. Real workflows. No fluff.
As a Microsoft partner with over 10 years of hands-on experience across Power BI, Azure integration services, data architecture, and enterprise AI adoption, we watch Build closely — not because it’s a good marketing moment, but because what Microsoft announces in June tends to shape what our clients ask us about in September. Here’s our preview of what’s coming, what we’re watching, and why it matters.
Microsoft Build 2025 – A Quick Look Back
Build 2025 was the year Microsoft went all-in on agentic AI. Satya Nadella’s opening keynote introduced a vision of an “agentic web” – AI that doesn’t just answer questions but actively completes tasks, coordinates with other agents, and drives workflows. The announcements that followed were substantial.We covered all of it — from the opening keynote and session schedules, through the Day 2 framework announcements, to the final breakout sessions and conclusions. If you want a refresher on what 2025 brought, those articles are still a useful guide to the foundations that Build 2026 is building on.
“What changed for our clients in the year since Build 2025? The questions shifted. In 2025 they were asking: “what can AI do?” In 2026 they’re asking: “how do I govern it, scale it, and connect it to my data?” That shift is exactly what Build 2026 is designed to address.” — Multishoring team
Microsoft Build 2026 – What You Need To Know About This Year’s Event
| Dates | June 2–3, 2026 |
| Venue | Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, California |
| In-person pass | $1,099 (application required — space is limited and curated for technical depth) |
| Online | Free — keynote and select sessions livestreamed June 2–3; on-demand content available after the event |
| Keynote | Satya Nadella, Tuesday June 2, 12:30–3:00 PM PDT (6:30–9:00 PM CEST) |
| Session tracks | Developer tools & frameworks | Cloud platform & data | Working with models | Agents & apps | Responsible AI | Windows |
| Register | Link |
One immediate difference from 2025: the event is now two days instead of four. Microsoft made a deliberate choice to concentrate the format. In-person attendance requires an application rather than simply a purchase — Microsoft states it wants to keep the on-site experience “deeply technical and highly interactive.”
The online option remains free and covers the keynote and live breakout sessions, making it the most accessible way for most teams to follow along.
What’s Changed – and What Build 2026’s Format Is Telling Us
The shift from Seattle to San Francisco, and from four days to two, is more than logistics. It’s a signal about what Microsoft is prioritising. Build 2025 was a broad sweep — four days, dozens of tracks, content for everyone from beginner developers to enterprise architects.
Build 2026 is explicitly positioned for AI developers, technical leaders, and enterprise developers. The audience has narrowed. The depth has increased.
Key differences from Build 2025:
- Shorter, denser format: Two focused days replace the four-day structure of 2025. Every session slot carries more weight.
- Speaker lineup signals: Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft AI CEO), Peter Steinberger (OpenAI), Chip Huyen, and Simon Willison join Satya Nadella — a lineup that reads more like a senior engineering summit than a developer expo.
- Revised session tracks: Responsible AI now has equal billing to the core developer and data tracks. That’s a deliberate signal about where Microsoft sees the conversation going in 2026.
The organising theme across all tracks is one that anyone following Microsoft’s last 18 months would recognise: agents are the new applications. Not AI features embedded in existing software. Not chatbots. Agents — autonomous, multi-step, production-grade systems that plan, act, and self-correct.
Build 2026 is where Microsoft will show how its entire toolchain has been rebuilt around that expectation.
Sessions We’re Watching at Microsoft Build 2026
The session catalogue is live at build.microsoft.com/sessions, with new sessions added weekly. Based on what’s already confirmed, here are the sessions that are most relevant to the work we do with our clients.
Opening Keynote – Satya Nadella (KEY01)
Satya Nadella and Microsoft leaders set the agenda for the year. In 2025, this was where Azure AI Foundry, GitHub Copilot’s agent evolution, and MCP were all introduced. In 2026, the expectation is that Microsoft will show the next chapter of that story — how the platforms launched last year have matured, what’s been learned from production deployments, and where the roadmap leads. Required viewing for any team building on Microsoft’s stack.
Build Smarter AI Systems in Foundry as Models and Costs Evolve (BRK230)
How do you choose, integrate, and validate AI models at scale inside Microsoft Foundry — without getting lost in a catalogue of 1,900+ options? This session addresses the practical challenge our clients face most often: not “which AI?”, but “which AI for this workflow, at this cost, with this governance requirement?” The deep IDE integration angle is particularly relevant for development teams who want model selection to be part of their normal workflow, not a separate architectural decision.
Why Your AI Code Doesn’t Ship: Closing the Gap to Production (BRK200)
Delivered by the GitHub team, this session addresses the question we hear most from clients who’ve built AI proof-of-concepts: “It works in the demo. How do we get it to production?” The session covers AI agents operating across the full development lifecycle — planning, coding, CI/CD, and live operations — and specifically tackles how to keep agents reliable in a production environment. If you only watch one Day 1 breakout, this is a strong candidate.
From Rows to Reasoning: Designing Databases for AI Apps and Agents (BRK223)
This is the data architecture session that has our attention. It introduces Azure HorizonDB, Microsoft’s new cloud-native PostgreSQL service, and frames it not just as another database option but as a rethinking of where intelligence should sit in your data stack. The premise: AI applications and agents require data platforms designed for reasoning, not just transactions. For teams working on data integration and architecture, this is likely the most strategically significant session of the conference.
Govern Open-Source AI Agents, Any Framework, Any Scale (BRK250)
As AI agents move into production, governance becomes non-optional. This session from Microsoft’s Responsible AI team covers context-aware evaluations, adversarial stress testing, and human-in-the-loop design for high-stakes workflows — using open controls that work across frameworks, not just Microsoft’s own. For enterprise clients in regulated industries, this is the session that turns agent adoption from a risk conversation into a practical one.
Your Agent, Anywhere – MultiClient, MultiDevice with GitHub Copilot SDK (BRK206)
The GitHub Copilot SDK lets developers build an agent once and deploy it across devices, apps, and cloud environments. This is the distribution story for agents — and it’s directly relevant to integration work. As agents increasingly become integration endpoints, the Copilot SDK is the mechanism that makes that connection systematic rather than custom-built for each deployment.
What We’ll Be Watching For – Multishoring’s Perspective
Build 2025 introduced the concepts. Build 2026 is where we expect to see the production reality. A year of enterprise AI adoption has produced a great deal of honest feedback — about what works, what breaks in real environments, and where the gaps are between platform announcements and practical implementation. Microsoft knows this. The session lineup reflects it.
Three themes we’ll be tracking especially closely:
- The data layer story. Azure HorizonDB and the ‘reasoning over operational data’ framing in BRK223 suggest Microsoft is rethinking where intelligence should sit — not just above the data, but in it. For teams we work with on data architecture and integration, this has direct architectural implications worth paying close attention to.
- Agent governance as a first-class concern. BRK250 having dedicated keynote-level billing is meaningful. Governance is not a compliance footnote in 2026 — it’s a core design requirement for production AI systems. Our clients in manufacturing, fintech, and healthcare will want to follow this closely.
- Foundry in production. In 2025, Foundry was a launch announcement. By June 2026, it will have had 12+ months of real-world use. The session on model selection and cost management (BRK230) will tell us where the friction points are — and how Microsoft is addressing them. For teams building on Azure, that context is essential.
“Build 2026 looks like the most practically useful event Microsoft has run in some years — because the questions it’s designed to answer are the ones we’re already fielding from clients. Not ‘what can AI do?’, but ‘how do we actually ship it, govern it, and connect it to the data we have?’ We’ll be covering the conference day by day and sharing our read on what matters. Watch this space.” — Multishoring team
How to Follow Microsoft Build 2026
The online stream is free. Register at build.microsoft.com to access the keynote and live sessions on June 2–3, with on-demand content available afterwards. No travel required.
Follow our Build 2026 coverage on the Multishoring. We’ll publish a Day 1 recap — covering Satya’s keynote and the first round of breakout sessions, and a Day 2 roundup with our overall conclusions shortly after.
If you followed our Build 2025 series, you know the format: not a session transcript, but our analysis of what the announcements mean for enterprise Microsoft teams.
If any of the themes in this preview connect to challenges your team is working through — whether that’s AI adoption planning, data architecture, Power BI and analytics strategy, or integration modernisation — we’re happy to talk. Reach out via the contact form or find us on LinkedIn.
The conference starts June 2. We’ll see you there.
