San José, CA / Berlin, DE, July 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The software industry has stopped asking whether AI can build software and started asking how to build it well. That was the central takeaway of WeAreDevelopers World Congress, the world's largest event for developers, AI builders and technology leaders, which brought 15,000 attendees to CityCube Berlin from July 8-10 to examine how AI in production is changing the way software is designed, built, secured and operated.
15.000 Developers at WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2026
"Last year, much of the industry was still asking itself what could be built with AI. We saw pilots, prototypes and concepts. This year, we saw working production stories: real systems, real users, real failures, real numbers. As an industry, we have moved from asking whether we can do this to asking how we do it well, securely, and at scale," said Sead Ahmetović, CEO and Co-Founder of WeAreDevelopers.
The congress was held under the patronage of Germany's Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation. Federal Minister Dr. Karsten Wildberger joined the Mainstage to discuss Europe's digital future and what it will take for Europe to move from being a user of technology to becoming a global shaper of it. Alongside the technical program, senior technology executives and policymakers came together in dedicated executive sessions on AI infrastructure, digital sovereignty and the redesign of engineering organizations.
From experimentation to production
The conference program with more than 500 speakers focused on the operational questions that follow when AI becomes part of the software delivery system: how to evaluate outputs, secure autonomous workflows, preserve context, operate infrastructure, align teams and maintain human judgment.
"When agents take over the writing of code, understanding the system becomes the developer's real job. The value shifts from typing lines to defining intent, judging output and designing how humans and agents work together," said Thomas Pamminger, CPO and Co-Founder of WeAreDevelopers. "That is changing what companies need from their engineers, and it is why practitioners need a place to share what actually works in production. We built WeAreDevelopers for exactly that."
Thomas Dohmke, CEO and Co-Founder of Entire and former CEO of GitHub, argued that the software development lifecycle must be rebuilt for agent-to-agent and agent-to-human collaboration. Taroon Mandhana, CTO AI and Teamwork at Atlassian, said that alignment, not coding, is becoming engineering's real bottleneck. NVIDIA CTO Michael Kagan shared his perspective on the infrastructure powering modern AI systems and where it is heading. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels reflected on the engineering culture that repeatedly turns "it can't be done" into production systems used by millions.
Further contributors included Markus Rautert, CTO of adidas; Malte Ubl, CTO of Vercel; Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP; Milin Desai, CEO of Sentry; Uli Irnich, CIO Advisor at Salesforce; and Neel Sundaresan, General Manager Automation and AI at IBM, among many other senior technology leaders.
"We're at a defining moment for software development. AI isn't simply changing the tools developers use, it's reshaping how software is imagined, built, and brought to life, and expanding who gets to participate in the process. WeAreDevelopers is an incredible place to connect with the global developer community, exchange ideas, and learn from the people navigating that shift in real time. The energy here is a powerful reminder that the future of development is being built right now," said Dana Lawson, CTO, Netlify.
Human judgment as a competitive advantage
Figma Chief Design Officer Loredana Crisan argued that as AI makes it easier to produce work that appears complete, the ability to distinguish between what looks finished and what is genuinely good becomes more important.
"AI can make something look finished in seconds. But finished-looking is not the same as good. Craft is the ability to hear and feel that gap, to explore more directions, and still know which one is worth shipping. In that sense, taste becomes even more important. Not just for the aesthetics, but as a competitive advantage," said Loredana Crisan, Chief Design Officer, Figma.
A launchpad for technology announcements
Four years after presenting the first public demo of GitHub Copilot on the WeAreDevelopers Mainstage as GitHub CEO, Dohmke returned with his new startup Entire to unveil its distributed Git network, now in preview: repositories are mirrored across regions so AI coding agents can clone and pull code without the rate limits, latency and outages of centralized hosting.
Google Cloud chose the congress to announce the public preview of Cloud Run sandboxes, a secure runtime environment built for executing untrusted code and AI agent workloads.
Bright Data launched Scraper Studio, an AI-powered platform that turns plain-English prompts into production-ready web scraping APIs. "The product finally gives AI agents reliable and structured real-time information from the web: no more blocking, no messy HTML, just clean, consistent and compact Markdown or JSON output," said Ariel Shulman, CPO, Bright Data.
The 40,000-square-meter expo featured more than 200 partners showcasing their latest products, tools, and insights, among them NVIDIA, Microsoft, GitHub, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Atlassian, SAP, Salesforce, Twilio, Deutsche Bank, GitLab, Cloudflare, and IBM.
Next stops: San Jose and Bengaluru
WeAreDevelopers continues its 2026 global program with WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America in San Jose, CA, from September 23-25, followed by WeAreDevelopers Conference India in Bengaluru from November 25-26.
"With Berlin, San Jose and Bengaluru, we are taking this conversation to three continents. The focus stays the same everywhere: giving developers, AI builders and technology executives a place to exchange what actually works and shape the next phase of software development in the age of AI," said Benjamin Ruschin, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of WeAreDevelopers.
WeAreDevelopers World Congress is the company's flagship event and the world's largest gathering for developers, AI builders and technology leaders.
Media assets
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1u4hYbbNoFy7QVF_VjDVPiXdktATYANyA
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels with Thomas Pamminger, CPO and Co-founder of WeAreDevelopers
About WeAreDevelopers
WeAreDevelopers is the global platform for tech talents to advance their careers in the age of AI. Every year, millions of tech professionals use the platform to build skills, share knowledge, and connect with peers and employers. Companies benefit from access to a unique community to strengthen their employer brand, attract talent, and showcase innovative products – online and at industry-leading events in Europe, North America, and India.
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