The cloud and hosting industry’s European calendar has a centerpiece in CloudFest, the sprawling infrastructure festival held each spring in Germany. This November, the Americas get their own edition. CloudFest Americas runs November 11 and 12, 2026 at Ice Palace Studios in Miami, and the organizers are positioning it as the convergence point for the cloud and internet infrastructure ecosystem across the region. They expect more than 2,000 attendees, 175-plus speakers and 90-plus sponsors over two days built around deal-making, keynotes, and the kind of after-hours networking the CloudFest brand is known for.
Why a Miami Edition Matters
For the Americas infrastructure industry, the value is location as much as content. CloudFest’s flagship is in Europe, which means a transatlantic trip for the US and Latin American operators who want its scale of deal-making and community. A Miami edition brings that within domestic reach, on a timeline and in a time zone that suit the region. Its co-location with NamesCon Global, the domain-industry conference, adds registrars, registries and domain investors in one stop, and the program pairs the usual deals and technology sessions with formal policy content, a nod to how infrastructure companies now have to navigate technical change, regulation and market pressure at the same time. It is still an early edition of the Americas event, building its audience rather than matching the European flagship’s scale, but the shape is deliberate.
What Actually Happens Over Two Days
CloudFest is not a standard trade show, and the Americas edition carries the format across. The two days mix keynotes and panels with executive roundtables aimed specifically at web hosts, web agencies and their leadership, alongside the networking events and parties that do much of the real work at an infrastructure gathering. The co-located NamesCon Global draws the domain crowd into the same halls. And in keeping with CloudFest tradition, there is a World Server Throwing Championship, the literal hurling of decommissioned servers that has become the event’s signature release valve. The audience the organizers are courting is broad: Tier 2 cloud providers, web hosts, managed service providers, web agencies, corporate IT teams and the open-source community.
The Program Is Built Around Five Pressures
The organizers have grouped the 2026 program around five themes, and they read as a map of what is keeping infrastructure operators up at night:
- AI, infrastructure and the future of compute
- Security, resilience and trust
- Traffic, discovery and digital growth
- Sustainable growth and operational efficiency
- The future of the internet economy
Among the sessions highlighted so far is a featured keynote, “AI in the Cloud: What’s Real, What Works, and What Scales,” pairing i2Coalition’s Christian Dawson with former Hostinger CEO Daugirdas Jankus. Other flagged keynote topics run from building hardware for inference workloads to securing next-generation networks and greener infrastructure. The full schedule is still being curated, so the agenda will keep filling in between now and November.
A Lineup That Spans Hosting, Domains and Security
The speaker roster reflects that breadth. Early names include Emmit McHenry, founder of Network Solutions, a pioneer of commercial domain registration; Elliot Noss of Groundmark.org; Ben Gabler, CEO of Rocket.net, one of the hosts building AI-agent access into its platform; and security and governance voices including Recorded Future’s Levi Gundert and ICANN’s Naela Sarras. The lineup puts registrar history, modern hosting, domains, security and internet governance in the same rooms, which is the whole idea of a convergence event. Announcements are updated weekly, so more names will land before the doors open.
Tickets and What’s Included
Registration is open. CloudFest Americas offers a Standard Pass for hosting providers, agencies, MSPs and enterprise IT, a Vendor Pass for software and hardware companies, discounted Group rates for teams of three or more, and a free Complimentary Pass for eligible staff at hosting firms of up to five employees and at web agencies. Every pass covers access to all sessions and the expo hall, along with coffee breaks, networking events, parties and onsite food. The full lineup is still taking shape, but the outline is already clear. For two days in November, Miami becomes the meeting point for the people who power, scale and support the internet across the Americas.
