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[WIP] GraphQLConf 2026 wrap #2431

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f4f0085
Fix dates for conference
bignimbus May 13, 2026
85e4db1
GraphQLConf 2026 wrap
bignimbus Jun 15, 2026
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion src/app/day/2026/nyc/schedule-data.ts
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ export const nycSessions: EventSession[] = [
id: 2,
uuid: "teach-yourself-graphql-2026",
title: "Teach yourself GraphQL in 2026: an anti-blueprint",
start: "2026-05-14T14:50:00-04:00",
start: "2026-05-14T14:40:00-04:00",
end: "2026-05-14T15:05:00-04:00",
tags: ["Learning", "Schema Design", "Best Practices"],
description:
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151 changes: 151 additions & 0 deletions src/pages/blog/2026-06-15-graphqlconf-2026-wrapup.mdx
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@@ -0,0 +1,151 @@
---
title: "GraphQLConf 2026 Wrap-up"
tags: ["announcements", "blog"]
date: 2026-06-15
byline: Uri Goldshtein, Jeff Auriemma
featured: true
---

GraphQLConf 2026 has come and gone, and what a conference it was! Two days of talks, demos, and hallway conversations at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Fremont, CA reminded everyone why this community is so special. We wish to send a heartfelt _thank you_ to our Platinum sponsor, Meta; our Gold Sponsors, The Guild and WunderGraph; our Silver sponsors, Apollo GraphQL and ChilliCream; our Open Source Community Sponsor, Airbnb; and our Bronze sponsor, Grafast. Their support made this event possible! We extend that gratitude to our speakers, who brought their best ideas and hard-won production wisdom to the stage; and to every attendee who traveled, tuned in, and showed up with curiosity and enthusiasm. GraphQL is what it is because of all of you.

## Keynotes: "GraphQL can and must be the language of AI."

Bookended by opening and closing remarks from Lee Byron, co-creator of GraphQL and Executive Director of the GraphQL Foundation, the keynote program told a coherent story about where GraphQL stands and where it's headed.

Uri Goldshtein of The Guild opened the day with a keynote on federation patterns seen in the wild. The framing was revealing: federation is no longer a frontier experiment — it's a set of well-worn paths that teams across the industry are navigating with increasing confidence. He spoke about how GraphQL, in its maturity, was becoming boring in the best possible way.

Elena Bukareva and Braxton Bragg from Meta followed with what may have been the most memorable talk of the conference: "The Creator's Curse: Why Meta Is Re-inventing GraphQL." In 2015, Meta promised GraphQL would be "easy to learn and use." Ten years and hundreds of billions of daily API calls later, not all of those promises survived contact with thousands of engineers. The keynote was a rare, candid look behind the curtain — which assumptions didn't hold, which complexity traps emerged, and what's now driving a new wave of reinvention at GraphQL's birthplace.

Benjie Gillam of Graphile and Kewei Qu of Meta closed the opening day's keynote block with "Creating a Golden Path for GraphQL." The argument: GraphQL's precise specification has delivered incredible interoperability and a rich ecosystem — but it hasn't guaranteed that every adopter has a great experience. Some leave disillusioned by performance pitfalls, security concerns, and complexity that wasn't visible at the outset. The talk was a call to action for the community to be more intentional about making the right path also the easy path.

Matt DeBergalis, CEO and Co-Founder of Apollo GraphQL, delivered a status report on a prediction made a year ago: that GraphQL would become foundational infrastructure for AI-driven applications. That prediction has come true. GraphQL is now powering critical AI initiatives at household brands across retail, hospitality, healthcare, and more. His thesis for the coming years: GraphQL's declarative, entity-based architecture is an ideal match for agentic systems, where agents need to reason about typed, structured data rather than ad-hoc REST responses. "GraphQL can and must be the language of AI."

On day two, Kewei Qu, Pascal Senn of ChilliCream, and Mark Larah of Yelp delivered the closing keynote: "GraphQL's Next Chapter: Progress, Proposals, and Participation." They reviewed working group progress on the specification and ecosystem, highlighted the new [GraphQL Auxiliary Proposals (GAPs)](/blog/2026-06-01-announcing-gaps/) initiative as a home for community-written specifications, and reflected on how far the community has come — and how it can continue to shape what comes next.

## Sessions

### Keynotes

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Federation Patterns We See in the Wild](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/76fc09beec012a1f43092ba55a295afb/) | Uri Goldshtein | The Guild |
| [The Creator's Curse: Why Meta Is Re-inventing GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/5fa93e5711633f3aca7c3ed8eabd6da5/) | Elena Bukareva, Braxton Bragg | Meta |
| [GraphQL in the AI Era](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a69fbe0529ffa9b7fb81ab3407e4886c/) | Matt DeBergalis | Apollo GraphQL |
| [Creating a Golden Path for GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/0466574bdb1df2c888e087738a0248f8/) | Benjie Gillam, Kewei Qu | Graphile, Meta |
| [GraphQL's Next Chapter: Progress, Proposals, and Participation](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/4f9ef38c5bf114a812996561c38e5455/) | Kewei Qu, Pascal Senn, Mark Larah | Meta, ChilliCream, Yelp |

### AI and LLMs

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Big Graphs, Tiny Contexts: Dev Tools for Agents](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/f315e1c9a4e9db5eb0bf9bf0b8fb7a4c/) | Stephen Spalding, Kavitha Srinivasan | Netflix |
| [The State of GraphQL Agent Skills](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/f6c386dc9b66f92219c5f36fc59c5a45/) | Dale Seo | Apollo GraphQL |
| [GraphQL: The Internal Agentic API](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a9f12ca7a20cde46521324c5665fb96b/) | Christopher Chedeau | Meta |
| [Closing the Loop: How GraphQL Gives Coding Agents Eyes on What Actually Matters](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a45eba5992e9862dfb097c03c0041374/) | Michael Staib | ChilliCream |
| [Bringing GraphQL Natively To Relational Databases With AI](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/cfb959d4eb1cc2c2a197eebd6cbfd386/) | Shashank Gugnani | Oracle |
| [Connecting LLMs To GraphQL With Schema-Aware Embeddings](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/b7ee9398e31eb0f65aca7d6a1ffa2658/) | Thore Koritzius | MWAY |
| [Hands Off the Keyboard: An Introduction to Agentic Coding for GraphQL Developers](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/dded18c303b6caaf7d74b4a0f125cee5/) | Erik Bylund | Apollo GraphQL |
| [Simplifying MCP Tool Sprawl With GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/f297e99f14761e6bb70006c8fe641692/) | Roy Derks | IBM |
| [GraphQL Meets LLMs & Agents: Building Production AI at Starbucks Scale](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/aa2e1bf3562603a5629f2c7527b40d92/) | Sharon Gorla | Starbucks |
| [Semantic Introspection](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/c9691dd7eac4e819a180d7fd8dceb9b3/) | Pascal Senn | ChilliCream |
| [GraphQL Embeddings: AI-Powered Dynamic Operations From Schema To IDE](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/07bc7cda6e90b92a6f217709a0ae1187/) | Michael Watson | Expedia Group |
| [A GraphQL-inspired Orchestration Language for the AI Era](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/b988a55f48a0405a74f9cd9d3bac64f8/) | Martijn Walraven | Apollo |
| [Governing the AI-Graph: Observability and Security for LLM-Generated Queries](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/c550128f032ccbaa02e723360ed92f97/) | Rajeshwari Sah | Apple |
| [GraphQL Data Mocking at Scale With LLMs and @generateMock](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/f95ae2cfb0b6a5e2e0dfa5971f531749/) | Michael Rebello | Airbnb |
| [From Query to Conversation: GraphQL as an AI Interface Layer](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/da2cf64328dde7c25f0ca728a21fa034/) | Kewei Qu, Hugh Nguyen, Ben Golub, Adam Conrad | Meta |

### Clients

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Schema Composition Without Federation](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/f774597408f7258ec847ab837fac41e9/) | Matt Mahoney | Meta |
| [Changing the Game for Trusted Documents — What If Your Whole Platform Natively Supported It?](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/d96e6d2bb0c7badfa5604e2ce8336138/) | Adam Benkhassen | The Guild |
| [Resolvers Everywhere: Rethinking Client and Server Boundaries in GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a819d5400df8820255e2c10069d82614/) | Janette Cheng | Meta |
| [Modern Apollo Client React](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/9796b4572382a080bb79d9e38d49297d/) | Brennen Davis | Lease End |
| [The Case Against \_\_typename](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/7d3a7e26a24ad1ef28c0c9a913dd69bb/) | Sabrina Wasserman | Meta |
| [Building MCP Apps With GraphQL Patterns You Already Know](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/404c47275bcd9b6fbceb8676b748321c/) | Jerel Miller | Apollo GraphQL |

### Federation + Distributed Systems

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Safely Merging Subgraphs in a Distributed World](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/ac9ecfab8b88cd2e0787f26ef22d1cef/) | Clarice Abreu, Rodrigo Jesus | Brex |
| [Federation, Reversed: A Consumer-First Future with Fission](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/c8e90ab44520b08fdf3eb7daf79864c3/) | David Stutt | WunderGraph |
| [Scaling Real-Time: Building Federated Subscriptions in Rust](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a31ba6e2e84a482857ebc4097d93c2aa/) | Denis Badurina | The Guild |
| [Shifting Instagram Development Towards Monolith Server Via Federated Schema](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/db3a6a6b83a936623e0ac45938bbb7ef/) | Xiao Han, Chi Chan, Lisa Watkins, Anirudh Padmarao | Meta |
| [The State of GraphQL Federation](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/4ff0c6241cf8433672629008d6d10223/) | Michael Staib | ChilliCream |

### Observability + Telemetry + Tracing

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Understanding Your Graph, One Hash at a Time](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a4dacb595dba7239ed2593ba0d6877a6/) | Jens Neuse | WunderGraph |
| [Observability for a Multi-Tenant GraphQL Gateway at Scale](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/d1bdf1a3eb90cb599c172cbdfa7fdd1c/) | Vickey Yeh | Airbnb |
| [Beyond HTTP 200: Observability With GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/616a26da6957b595a0bc10905cff2720/) | Dotan Simha | The Guild |

### Performance

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Lower Latency With Streaming GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/b3acfcd8ef988b2c4826c1b762ff232a/) | Rob Richard | 1stDibs |
| [Shopify's Breadth-First Bet: Rethinking GraphQL Execution](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/d1fc287ccb02b3ea18262565aaded6cf/) | Greg MacWilliam | Shopify |
| [When GraphQL Gets Expensive: Performance & Cost Patterns in Production Serverless Architectures](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/0951f42a2162567dc11112cf2930efa6/) | Harpreet Siddhu, Shravanth Venkatesh | AWS Community Builder, Independent |
| [An Alternative To JSON Responses: Argo in WhatsApp](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/da4024be753754cfdcf532eda0bc53fb/) | Kevin Gorham | Meta |

### Production Insights

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [The 40,000-field Query: Optimizations for Gigantic High-QPS Operations](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/e87d74fcfd6a5bf55d7169e394799f63/) | Gary Zeng | Meta |
| [The Internal Lens: GraphQL Gateways From a Different Axis](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/07dd652a752f9eab711c7e87048cb2d6/) | Angel Svirkov | trivago |
| [Incrementally Adopting GraphQL. The Holy Grail?](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/d015ee04513e8e5aaea699e1b5a46d75/) | Robert Balicki | Pinterest |
| [Scaling GraphQL on AWS: Production Architecture for High-Volume Data Systems](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/6e3a9d8b4e0444ae042685debe3d45ff/) | Aishwarya Tirumala | Amazon |
| [How GraphQL Helped Create Scalability and Stability in the Retirement Space](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/15844582a2e93253bcc811ddc782ecf5/) | Cameron Sechrist | Stax.ai |
| [@live GraphQL in Practice: Postgres-to-React Realtime Data Sync](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/89470f00e294ad39c964a82f76fe4009/) | Tobbe Lundberg | Cedar Software |

### Schema Design + Evolution + Governance

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [The @deprecated Journey: Five Stops From Schema Hint To Gateway Power](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/f211249285d7efe0eaacae39613604fa/) | Nasser Abouelazm | Bloomberg |
| [Breaking up With Inputs (Without Breaking Your Users)](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a7caf168c70c3f50d1805a1cb9e5119a/) | Laurin Quast | The Guild |
| [Inverse Conway Maneuver, with GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/0fc60882958e48a56978dedf3c4b0e17/) | Sam Deng | Zillow Group |
| [Screens on Shuffle: How Netflix Scales Server-Driven, Ever-Changing Pages](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/384700fc44d299d25a6b73b38fa38870/) | Sreekanth Ramakrishnan | Netflix |
| [Stop Reviewing Schemas: How Intuit Made Developers Faster by Automating Governance](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/a728ff82aae5134dd4c445ab1a0bc9d4/) | Oleks Bidiuk | Intuit |

### Security

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [The Invisible Fortress: Embedding Zero-Trust Governance in the Supergraph](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/c1415e7ff525257cfa96ef7daa49a11b/) | Gaurav Singh, Sulbigar Shanawaz | Capital One |
| [GraphQLShield: CWE-Aware Defense in Depth for GraphQL APIs in Go](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/730a36f1934e8c81b852400070bf08d3/) | Ravi Sastry Kadali | Samsung |

### Servers

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [React Server Components Vs. GraphQL](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/ac1946c42298b0ddfaed06e7abdf4776/) | Jordan Eldredge | Meta |
| [Service-to-service GraphQL: The New Sweet Spot!](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/518a5297b05f1d7d0807bd1638308a1c/) | Mark Larah | Yelp |
| [Grafast: A Declarative Solution To GraphQL's Execution Woes](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/4173396a76b0052395608ef918aacdbf/) | Benjie Gillam | Graphile |
| [Turning San Francisco Into a GraphQL Server](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/50d245b496fbe7e54087e218e9b4b60d/) | Jean Lucas Lima | ConfrariaTech |

### Tooling, DX, Testing + Documentation

| Session | Speaker(s) | Organization |
|---------|-----------|--------------|
| [Teach Yourself GraphQL in 2026: An Anti-blueprint](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/09f9a62b715fa18505ba2fca81f82314/) | Jeff Auriemma | Apollo |
| [Making GraphQL Fun for the Backend Too](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/5004748545abbc5c1dfffd50eeb14b0b/) | Stephen Haberman | Homebound |
| [The Easy Way and the Hard Way: Blue-green GraphQL Deployments](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/85567715cc1d01d7002aa8db5beb1193/) | Zack Warnimont | Apollo |
| [Caching Deep Dive: The Ultimate Way To Speed up Your GraphQL API](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/76ddf2f65ecfd5036ad78bed7f631061/) | Tuval Simha | The Guild |
| [The Biggest Change To GraphQL Codegen in 10 Years](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/dcd9017f3882e90a2afbdc44893441cd/) | Eddy Nguyen, Igor Kusakov | The Guild, Yelp |
| [The Graph Awakens: Next-Level GraphQL Visualization](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/24612e3da6dde3406c8af6dee51f275b/) | Ivan Goncharov | APIs.guru |
| [Brute Force Correctness](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/0a67525d56d469af7df6fc4763e3f75e/) | James Bellenger | Airbnb |
| [Speed Without Sacrifice: How Wayfair Transforms DevEx With AI and MCP](https://graphql.org/conf/2026/schedule/73b21b1bb1a0d976eef05c0650c41455/) | Rohit Gupta, Bhavana Sree Pallempati | Wayfair |

## Community

The GraphQL All Hands Meeting on day two gave attendees a direct forum with the GraphQL Foundation and core maintainers. The feedback was consistent with what we've heard in prior years and rings just as true: the community wants more content: more tutorials, more production case studies, more educational material that meets developers where they are. There was also notable enthusiasm for GraphQL Locals, the initiative to support locally-organized GraphQL meetups around the world. Several new organizers stepped up at the conference, and the pipeline of upcoming local events looks strong heading into the second half of 2026. The Ambassadors program and the Community Working Group both continue to grow. The spring 2026 cohort made their presence felt at the conference, and conversations are already underway about expanding the program.

## What's next

Session recordings will be available on the [GraphQL Foundation YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@GraphQLFoundation). For upcoming events, working group meetings, and GraphQL Locals events near you, visit [calendar.graphql.org](https://calendar.graphql.org).
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