VMware Explore 2026 Las Vegas

Posted: 14.10.2026

Before the Conference, exploring Las Vegas

Since we had some time before the conference started, we used the opportunity to explore Las Vegas properly. We rented a car, drove around the city and tried to experience some of what Vegas has to offer outside the conference center.

Las Vegas is definitely one of those places where there is always something happening. Between the Strip, the huge hotels, casinos, restaurants and everything else packed into the city, there was plenty to explore before switching into conference mode.

Another year, another VMware Explore in Las Vegas!

After attending VMware Explore in 2025, I already knew that I wanted to come back. Last year was my first time in the USA and my first VMware Explore in Las Vegas, so this time I had a much better idea of what to expect and how to make the most out of the week.

VMware Explore is obviously about technology, learning and VMware Cloud Foundation, but one thing I learned last year is that the experience is much bigger than just the conference itself. It is also about meeting people, spending time with colleagues, exploring a new place and having some fun along the way.

Monday, August 31 – Certifications, Experts and the Plenary

Monday was the first official day of VMware Explore 2026, and I decided to start the conference in probably the most relaxing way possible: by taking two certification exams.

One of the great benefits of VMware Explore is the opportunity to take certification exams directly at the conference. Full Event Pass holders received a complimentary VMware Cloud Foundation certification exam, and the certification center was available throughout the event. It is a great opportunity to validate your skills while everything is still fresh from working with the technology.

There was also some pretty cool motivation for passing. The VCAP certifications came with a pair of exclusive VMware sneakers, while the other certifications had a VMware travel case as the reward.

Not a bad way to start a conference!

It was a great way to start the trip before a few very busy days at VMware Explore.

After the exams, I headed into The Hub and spent some time at the Expert Bar.

The Expert Bar is one of my favorite concepts at Explore. Instead of attending a presentation and hoping your particular question gets answered, you can walk up and talk directly with VMware product experts and engineers about the technology you are actually working with. The official event describes it as a place to bring your toughest questions and talk directly with specialists from VMware.

For me, this was especially useful because we are currently working on the design of a fairly large VMware Cloud Foundation environment for a customer back home. I brought some of the questions and design challenges we are currently discussing and used the opportunity to get another perspective.

Some questions were answered directly, while others were complex enough that the experts gave me contact information for people we could continue discussing them with after the conference. Those conversations have actually continued after getting home, which shows how valuable these interactions can be.

It is one of those things that is difficult to replicate remotely. Having direct access to the people who actually design and build the products is probably one of the biggest reasons for attending Explore in person.

The VMware Explore 2026 Plenary

Later in the afternoon it was time for the plenary session, “Shaping the Future of Private AI Cloud and Agentic Innovation.” AI was clearly one of the biggest themes this year, with Broadcom focusing heavily on how VMware Cloud Foundation can become the infrastructure platform for private AI.

One of the biggest announcements was VMware Private AI Cloud, designed around the idea of bringing AI models to where enterprise data already lives instead of constantly moving data into external services. Alongside this, Broadcom announced VMware AI Factory, which combines VCF infrastructure automation with AI services and aims to automate the journey from bare-metal infrastructure all the way to serving AI models. Broadcom also announced integration with MetalSoft for automated provisioning and lifecycle management of physical servers.

There were also announcements around securing this new world of AI. VMware vDefend and Avi are being expanded to better understand and protect agentic AI workloads, while Broadcom introduced AgentMinder, a solution intended to control what autonomous AI agents are actually allowed to do. VMware Tanzu also received new capabilities focused on providing governed data and application services for enterprise AI agents.

The plenary ended with one non-technical announcement: VMware Explore will return to Las Vegas in 2027, but it is moving to Resorts World Las Vegas and moving earlier in the year, May 3–6, 2027.

A Lot Has Happened Since the Beginning

Whenever you attend something like Explore and hear about private AI clouds, Kubernetes and agentic AI, it is pretty interesting to think about where VMware started.

From Workstation in 1999 and ESX Server in 2001, through vMotion, vSphere, NSX and vSAN, and now into VMware Cloud Foundation, Kubernetes and Private AI, quite a lot has happened.

After the plenary, everyone moved into The Hub for the Welcome Reception. This is where the conference starts to feel a little less like a traditional IT conference. There was food, drinks, vendors and plenty of opportunities to meet both old and new friends from the VMware community.

We met up with some fellow colleagues, grabbed some food and drinks and enjoyed the evening.

Afterwards, we decided we still had room for more food and headed to Giordano's to try a proper Chicago-style deep-dish pizza.

Calling it a pizza almost feels misleading. It is closer to eating an entire casserole disguised as a pizza, but it was definitely something we had to try while in the US.

A pretty solid ending to the first day.

Tuesday, September 1 – VKS, Management Services and Odyssey

Tuesday started slightly differently.

Before heading to the conference, we got up early and walked down to the famous Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. Walking through Las Vegas early in the morning is a completely different experience compared to later in the day, and it was a great way to start the morning before spending another full day indoors.

Back at the conference, I started the day with some very relevant sessions around vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) architecture and the new VCF Management Services architecture in VCF 9.1.

VKS continues to become a much more integrated part of VMware Cloud Foundation. Instead of Kubernetes feeling like a completely separate platform alongside your virtualization environment, VMware is pushing towards VMs and Kubernetes sharing the same underlying infrastructure, operational model and platform services. VCF includes VKS together with Container Service and VM Service as core services for modern applications.

Another topic that was particularly interesting for the environment we are currently designing was VCF Management Services.

VCF 9.1 changes how several of the management components are deployed. Previously, fleet management and different control-plane functions were distributed across separate appliances. With VCF 9.1, many of these capabilities are consolidated into a common Management Services runtime. This includes services for lifecycle management, the software depot, logging, VCF SSO, configuration management and other fleet- and instance-level functions.

For anyone designing larger VCF environments, this is a pretty significant architectural change and definitely something worth understanding.

VMware Odyssey

After the sessions, it was time to try VMware Odyssey.

Odyssey is basically VMware Hands-on Labs turned into a competition. Instead of calmly following a lab guide, you are given technical challenges that you have to solve yourself. Your result is based on both accuracy and speed, so knowing how to solve something is only half the challenge—you also need to solve it quickly.

The qualification consisted of three chapters with several tasks in each chapter. The interesting and slightly painful part is that some tasks involve things you may never have been asked to do before.

There is no comfortable step-by-step guide telling you where to click.

You have to understand the problem, figure out the solution and then execute it while the clock is running.

The eight highest scores from the qualifying rounds advanced to the live final on Wednesday.

I did not make the top eight.

But it was still one of my favorite activities at the conference. It is both humbling and impressive to see how quickly some people can understand a completely new task and find the right solution.

It also gives you a very clear indication of the areas where you should probably spend some more time in Hands-on Labs before next year's competition.

An Evening with the Community

After another full conference day, we headed to the VMUG Member Reception at Wakuda. VMUG has always been a huge part of the VMware community, and these receptions are a great opportunity to meet people outside the normal session format. The 2026 reception included drinks and appetizers and brought together VMware users from all over the world.

From there, we continued to a Red Hat reception at F1 Arcade inside Caesars Palace. This was a very different environment from the normal conference sessions, with food, drinks and access to the F1 racing simulators.

It is these kinds of events where you often end up having some of the best conversations of the entire week. There is no PowerPoint presentation and no scheduled agenda, just people from different companies and countries talking about technology, customers and experiences.

Afterwards, we met up with the rest of the team for dinner.

Wednesday, September 2 – Technical Sessions, Odyssey Finals and The Party

Wednesday morning was spent attending a few more technical sessions.

At this point in the conference, I found myself focusing more and more on topics directly related to the architecture work we are doing back home—VCF operations, networking, recovery, automation and how the different pieces of VCF 9.1 fit together in larger environments.

That is another thing I really like about Explore. You can start the week with a relatively fixed agenda, but after talking to people at the Expert Bar or hearing something interesting in another session, your plan quickly changes.

There were 47 breakout sessions, 18 Booth Theater sessions, 20 Meet the Expert Roundtables and 11 expert-led Hands-on Lab workshops running on Wednesday alone, so there was definitely no shortage of content.

Cheering from the Odyssey Sideline

At 11:00 it was time for the Odyssey Final.

Even though I had failed to qualify myself, one of my colleagues had made it into the top eight, so naturally we had to show up and provide some Norwegian support from the audience.

The final puts the eight best qualifiers on stage and gives them another set of real-world technical challenges while the leaderboard changes live in front of the audience.

Watching it is surprisingly entertaining for what is essentially eight people configuring IT infrastructure.

The skill level was impressive. Watching people get a completely new technical problem, understand what is being asked and immediately start working through it is a great reminder that deep product knowledge and good troubleshooting skills are two very different things.

The finalists also walked away with some pretty serious prizes: all eight received an Odyssey Letterman jacket and Yeti bottle, while the top three received LEGO sets.

Learning Through Games

Odyssey was not the only competition at Explore.

Throughout the conference there were different challenges and activities where you could collect points and win prizes. We ended up coming home with, among other things, a Game Boy-style handheld, a charger and a small keyboard fan.

And while the prizes are obviously fun, I actually think the concept behind these challenges is really clever.

To complete them, you often have to visit different booths, talk to vendors, ask questions or learn something about a product that you otherwise probably would have walked straight past.

It forces you out of your normal bubble.

You might start a conversation purely because you need some points for a challenge and walk away having learned about a technology you had never really considered before. That makes the gamification surprisingly effective.

The VMware Explore Party at TAO

Wednesday night meant it was time for The Party, VMware Explore's official closing celebration.

This year it took place at TAO Beach and Nightclub at The Venetian. VMware had basically taken over the 44,000-square-foot venue and filled it with a DJ, arcade games, Giant Jenga, Connect Four and even blackjack and craps tables using play money.

And of course there was food.

The menu included things like Wagyu sliders, spicy tuna on crispy rice, chicken yakitori, crispy tofu, macarons, tiramisu and plenty of drinks.

After three long days of sessions, exams, labs and running around The Venetian, it was a great way to finish the main part of the conference.

Thursday, September 3 – Las Vegas to San Francisco

For us, the adventure did not stop when VMware Explore ended.

On Thursday we picked up a rental car and started what turned into one of the highlights of the entire trip: a road trip from Las Vegas to San Francisco.

And if you are going to do an American road trip, there is really only one proper way to start it.

With an American diner breakfast.

Our first stop was Lou's Diner, where we got the full experience: diner booths, coffee, eggs, pancakes and enough food to make sure we would not need another meal for quite a while.

From there we headed out of Las Vegas and towards Death Valley.

The contrast from Las Vegas could hardly be bigger. One minute you are surrounded by casinos, LED screens and enormous hotels, and a few hours later you are driving through a completely empty desert surrounded by mountains.

Driving through Death Valley was one of those experiences where the pictures really do not capture how enormous the landscape feels.

And the scenery kept changing.

From the desert we continued towards Yosemite National Park, trading the dry landscape for mountains, forests and some absolutely incredible views.

Eventually we continued towards San Francisco.

It made for a long road trip, but if you have the opportunity to combine a trip to Las Vegas with a drive through Death Valley and Yosemite, I can highly recommend it.

Going from the Las Vegas Strip, through some of the driest landscape imaginable, into Yosemite and eventually ending up in San Francisco is a pretty amazing way to finish a week in the US.

More Than Just a Conference

Looking back at VMware Explore 2026, the technical content was obviously a huge part of the trip.

I came home with new knowledge around VCF 9.1, VKS, Management Services, networking, automation, recovery and the direction VMware is heading with Private AI. I also got answers to real design questions that we can use in customer projects, and established contacts with VMware experts that we are continuing to work with after the conference.

But just like last year, my biggest takeaway is that VMware Explore is about much more than technology.

It is the conversations between sessions.

It is asking an engineer a question at the Expert Bar and ending up discussing architecture for half an hour.

It is competing in Odyssey, meeting people through VMUG, having dinner with colleagues, winning completely unnecessary conference prizes, eating far too much deep-dish pizza and spending the final days driving through Death Valley and Yosemite.

You can watch most presentations online afterwards.

You cannot really download the rest of the experience.

And that is probably the best reason I can give for attending VMware Explore in person.