VMware Explore 2026 lands August 31 – September 3 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Registration opened April 28. For anyone running VCF, NSX, or vSAN in production, this is the one week where the roadmap, the engineering teams, and the wider community are in the same building.
What’s going to dominate the agenda
One story, really: VCF 9.1 and AI-native private cloud. 9.1 hit GA earlier this month, so by late August the sessions will be field-experience driven rather than “here’s what’s coming.” Expect deep dives on:
- Memory tiering and cost-per-workload. Broadcom is claiming up to 40% server cost reduction via intelligent memory tiering and 39% lower storage TCO through enhanced compression for AI pipelines. Those numbers will get scrutinized in breakouts.
- VKS at scale. VKS 3.6 reportedly supports up to 500 clusters per control plane, plus VM Fast-Deploy via linked clones for genuine self-service.
- Private AI on VCF. GPU scheduling, RAG, LLM hosting, and the NVIDIA/AMD/Intel/Canonical partnerships. This was the centerpiece in 2025 and 9.1 doubles down.
- Resilience as architecture. vSAN for Recovery, on-prem ransomware recovery, CrowdStrike Falcon EDR integration, encrypted vMotion offloaded to Intel QAT, and Continuous Compliance Enforcement.
- Live patching for TPM-enabled hosts. Small feature, outsized operational impact on large estates.
Explore on Tour 2026
If Vegas isn’t viable: Mumbai, Singapore, Tokyo, Frankfurt, London, and — new this year — Washington, D.C. on December 8 at the Ronald Reagan Building, tailored to U.S. public sector. Singapore and Frankfurt include partner training days.
How to plan the week
- Labs and certs first, breakouts second. Recorded sessions show up on-demand. Lab time and exam vouchers don’t.
- Quick talks punch above their weight. 15-20 minutes, engineer-led, four for the price of one breakout.
- The Hub matters more than the Expo floor. Hallway conversations with vExperts, VMUG leaders, and engineers are where you learn what’s actually broken and what’s stable.
- Save Wednesday afternoon for synthesis. Block an hour, write down the three things you’re actually going to do when you get home. Otherwise it all evaporates.
Event details:
- Dates: August 31 – September 3, 2026
- Venue: The Venetian Convention and Expo Center, Las Vegas
- Register: vmware.com/explore/us
See you in Vegas.
