KubeCon Amsterdam Pre-Brief: Navigating Kubernetes' Future, Crossplane's Rise, and Gateway API Adoption Challenges

As KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam approaches, cloud-native experts Victor and Kostis highlighted key networking opportunities, offering a sneak peek into their activities. Attendees can meet them at various booths, including Argo, Octopus Deploy, and Flux, with Kostis also hosting a free book signing for “Argo CD the right way,” focusing on anti-patterns. Emphasizing the value of the ‘hallway track,’ they encouraged attendees to prioritize networking, explore company booths for potential future solutions, and attend popular community parties listed on conferenceparties.com, including the recommended Isovalent and Kubaroki events.

The session delved into pressing technical questions, particularly regarding Kubernetes partitioning for multiple CRD versions. VCluster was championed as a robust solution, enabling isolated virtual clusters within a single parent cluster, with a mention of its production use and a related KubeCon 2026 presentation on multiple Argo CD instances. Discussions on the future of Kubernetes concluded it’s unlikely to be entirely replaced within a decade but might evolve behind new abstractions. Wasm was dismissed as a container replacement due to ecosystem maturity and unresolved issues like networking and storage, while Nomad, though liked, lacked industry adoption. For infrastructure management, Crossplane was strongly advocated over Terraform for Kubernetes-native operations, especially for K8s-savvy teams, despite acknowledging Terraform’s continued relevance. The use of Argo Rollouts as a replacement for Flagger was recommended, alongside confirmation that Flux development continues under Control Plane.

Further technical exchanges covered the analysis of CI/CD pipelines using AI agents for PR feedback and deployment monitoring, with Octopus Deploy noted for its AI-powered deployment anomaly detection. Grouping Kubernetes resources was clarified with Argo CD ApplicationSets as a primary solution. Concerns about the Teranetis controller, which aims to run Terraform in Kubernetes, centered on its non-Kubernetes native approach to resource reconciliation. On security, a preference for multiple scanning tools (e.g., Aqua, Palo Alto) for comprehensive DevSecOps was expressed, with the idea of a single developer platform for consolidated viewing. The session also touched upon the surprisingly slow adoption of Gateway API, despite its benefits for ingress management and flexibility, with Istio and Gateway (not Envoy Gateway) suggested as strong implementations. Finally, the discussion acknowledged the perceived bias of platform engineering tools towards IT companies, attributing it to a lack of public sharing from non-IT sectors due to various constraints.