Cloud Run at Cloud Next 2026

April 13, 2026 :: Wietse Venema

Google Cloud Next 2026 is just around the corner, and I've spent the morning filtering through the hundreds of sessions to find the ones most relevant to Cloud Run, so you don't have to!

New this year are the discussion groups: an opportunity for more in-depth conversation with the speakers.

Day 1 – April 22, 2026

Kick off the conference with these Cloud Run sessions.

What's new in Cloud Run (BRK2-057)

You don't want to miss this talk with an overview of all the new features in Cloud Run, and two very compelling customers on stage.

Discussion Group: Ask me anything: A conversation with the Cloud Run team (BRK2-057-DG)

  • Time: 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM
  • Note: Overlaps with my talk The ultimate guide to Cloud Run: Go from zero to production

Meet the speakers to ask more questions.

The ultimate guide to Cloud Run: Go from zero to production (BRK2-065)

  • Time: 2:45 PM – 3:30 PM
  • Speakers: Sara Ford, Wietse Venema
  • Note: Overlaps with the discussion group for the talk What's new in Cloud Run

Join Sara and me for this demo-driven session to learn Cloud Run. It's perfect if you're just getting started and want to get a complete overview of the product.

Discussion Group: Cloud Run 101: How to get started (BRK2-065-DG)

  • Time: 5:00 PM – 5:30 PM

Join Sara and me in this discussion group to learn more and ask your questions.

Full-stack improv: From idea to app in 45 minutes (BRK2-080)

You name it, they’ll build it. If you enjoy chaos and Luke's unbeatable stage energy, this will be just the session for you.

Day 2 – April 23, 2026

Day 2 focuses on scaling AI agents and architectures with serverless.

Empower your AI agents to automate deployments with Cloud Run (BRK2-077)

A closer look at the managed Cloud Run MCP server. Enable it and your coding agent can deploy apps to Cloud Run.

Build AI agents on Cloud Run (BRK2-059)

  • Time: 11:45 AM – 12:30 PM
  • Speakers: Edward Wright (VirginMedia O2 UK), Ryan Pei, Taylor Money
  • Note: Overlaps with From code to production: The path of least resistance

I'm excited for this one. Ryan, Taylor, and their team have been working hard to get a new Cloud Run feature in the hands of developers and this is going to be their moment to show it to you!

Discussion Group: Deep dive into AI agents on Cloud Run (BRK2-059-DG)

  • Time: 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM

Join the speakers to talk more.

From code to production: The path of least resistance (BRK2-067)

This session shows how to use a programming languages to configure Cloud Run resources directly from your IDE.

LLM Council: Build and scale deterministic ADK agents on Cloud Run (BRK2-058)

  • Time: 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
  • Speakers: Dan Dobrin, Lisa Shen
  • Note: Overlaps with Build AI architectures with custom models on Cloud Run

Dan and Lisa showing you how to deploy LLM Council to Cloud Run using Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK). LLM Council is an architectural pattern created by Andrej Karpathy that uses multiple AI models to answer complex questions through a collaborative process. You'll feel just at home if you like Java, ADK, and Spring AI.

Build AI architectures with custom models on Cloud Run (BRK2-060)

A year ago, Cloud Run launched on-demand GPUs. In this session, you'll hear from a customer using them in production, and see how to fine-tune and serve inference for small LLM models on Cloud Run.

Discussion Group: Deep dive into custom models on serverless GPUs (BRK2-060-DG)

  • Time: Day 3, 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM

Join this discussion group to learn more about custom models on serverless GPUs.

Day 3 – April 24, 2026

The final day covers zero-trust security and autonomous data agents. Both sessions are scheduled at the same time, so you'll have to pick just one!

Architect zero-trust security with Cloud Run (BRK2-076)

  • Time: 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM
  • Speakers: Ruchika Goel, Ryo Fujihira (NTT DOCOMO, INC.), Shane Ouchi, Yusei Miura (NTT DATA JAPAN CORPORATION)
  • Note: Overlaps with Enable autonomous data agents with BigQuery and Cloud Run

As of this March, you can configure Identity-Aware-Proxy (IAP) directly on Cloud Run. This session dives deeper into that, and shows at least one feature I've wanted to exist since 2019!

Enable autonomous data agents with BigQuery and Cloud Run (BRK3-019)

  • Time: 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM
  • Speakers: Vlad Kolesnikov
  • Note: Overlaps with Architect zero-trust security with Cloud Run

Vlad will showcases an agent on Cloud Run using the new BigQuery Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to interact with data.

See you there!

If you're attending Next in person, I'd love to say hi. Reach out on LinkedIn!

See you in Las Vegas!

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