On September 24, 2026, TrueFullstaq brings back EDGECASE for its fifth edition — and if the teaser art is any clue, this year’s hook is impossible to miss. A purple-suited astronaut is mid-lunge, reaching to “catch” the Kubernetes helm logo like it’s a Poké Ball. The tagline says it all: Gotta Catch ‘Em All.
That playful framing hides a serious point. Just as Pokémon trainers build their collection one creature at a time, platform engineers assemble their cloud-native ecosystem pod by pod, cluster by cluster, service by service. EDGECASE 2026 leans straight into that analogy — and backs it with the largest Kubernetes-focused gathering in the Netherlands.
The essentials
- When: September 24, 2026
- Where: Gooiland, Hilversum (NL) — a brand-new venue, easy to reach by train with parking right around the corner
- Who: 400+ cloud-native professionals — platform engineers, architects, CTOs, and platform leaders
- Host: Bart Farrell, returning to guide the day
- Edition: The 5th
If you work in Kubernetes or platform engineering in the Benelux, this is the date to circle.
Why “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” fits Kubernetes
The Pokémon comparison is sharper than it looks. When Kubernetes first appeared, plenty of teams asked the same question players once did: “What is this?” Today it’s the default platform for running modern applications — orchestrating containers, scaling infrastructure, and keeping workloads resilient in messy, real-world environments.
Platform engineers collect capabilities the same way trainers collect creatures: Pods, Clusters, Services, Security, Storage. At EDGECASE the message is simple — you catch them all, and you orchestrate them all.
What’s on the agenda
The full program lands in the coming months, but the shape is clear. Expect deep technical sessions on Kubernetes, platform engineering, security, and cloud-native infrastructure, mixed with real-world war stories from engineers who build and run these platforms daily.
The themes the organizers are promising:
- Scaling Kubernetes at real production load
- Automation across the platform lifecycle
- Digital sovereignty — owning your stack in a volatile landscape
- Edge workloads — running cloud native where the users actually are
- A dedicated business track for leaders who need a grip on AI, cloud, and crisis management
Speakers to watch
The confirmed lineup is already strong. Headline names include:
- Justin Garrison — Head of Product at Sidero Labs
- Shantanu Gattani — SVP, Product at Sysdig
- Rick Brouwer — OPS Specialist at DUO and KEDA maintainer
- Harke Wijnsma — Practice Lead Ops at DUO
- Merijn Keppel — Principal Consultant at TrueFullstaq
- Kris Budde — Product Owner at STACKIT Edge Cloud
- Fabian Schmitt — Platform Engineer at Schwarz Digits Cloud
- William Rizzo — Global Field CTO at Mirantis and Kairos maintainer
- Gerrit Tamboer — Chief Evangelist at TrueFullstaq
- Bart Farrell — Community host
More names are on the way, and with Bart Farrell hosting, the day promises the same mix of technical depth and strategic insight that made earlier editions sell out.
Last year: EDGECASE 2025 “The Multiverse Saga”
I was at the previous edition on 23 September 2025, at the Rijtuigenloods in Amersfoort. The theme was “The Multiverse Saga”, and the venue is a former railway carriage shed: the booths stood between old wagons, pipes and steel trusses, which suits a Kubernetes crowd better than any hotel ballroom.
The main hall filling up before the next session. The banner on the left reads “This TrueFullstaq flagship event is powered by” Sidero, Sysdig, Chainguard, Dell Technologies, Grafana Labs, AWS and Veeam.
The main stage had a wall-sized LED screen running galaxy visuals to match the theme. Out on the expo floor I recorded a few short booth clips:
- Sidero, the company behind Talos Linux, was there as a sponsor and was already promoting TalosCon 2025 in Amsterdam that October. I went, and wrote it up in my TalosCon 2025 recap.
- Chainguard’s booth carried the line “The Safe Source for Open Source”. Their demo compared the CVE count of a JDK image pulled from Docker Hub with their own image, which they rebuild from source every day. They also pointed out that every image comes with a generated SBOM.
- Dell Technologies was showing Dell Private Cloud and the Dell Automation Platform.
Left: at the Chainguard booth. Right: on the expo floor near the Sidero booth, under the TrueFullstaq cube.
For the full write-up, with the Justin Garrison talk and the booth interviews, see my EDGECASE 2025 recap.
My take: the 2025 sponsor list read like a map of a modern platform stack. Talos for an immutable OS, Chainguard for supply chain security, Dell for private cloud, Sysdig for runtime security and Grafana Labs for observability. That’s the stack a lot of Dutch platform teams are putting together right now, and EDGECASE puts all of those vendors in one hall.
Should you go?
If you’re building or operating Kubernetes platforms in the Netherlands, EDGECASE is the most concentrated room of practitioners you’ll find all year. 400+ engineers, a curated cloud-native track, and a business track for the leaders who have to make the calls — that’s a rare combination in one day.
Tickets are already open, with early-bird, snooze-bird, and regular tiers. The earlier you catch yours, the better the price.
If you register through my personal link you get 25% off the ticket:
🔗 Register for EDGECASE 2026 with code EC26-LUCA-25
You can also pre-register on the official Edgecase 2026 event page and follow TrueFullstaq for the full lineup as it drops.
This is a preview — I’ll be back with a full recap and photos once the event happens. In the meantime, save the date and spread the word.
