I’ve just come back from AWS Summit London 2026, and what a day it’s been. I spent April 22nd at Excel London in Royal Victoria Dock, immersing myself in over 200 sessions spanning everything from agentic AI to serverless computing. If you couldn’t make it, here’s everything you need to know about what just went down.
Event Overview
AWS Summit London is their biggest free cloud technology event in the UK, and today’s edition was no exception. I spent the day bouncing between breakout sessions, workshops, chalk talks, code talks, and GameDay. The event brought together builders, developers, architects, and enterprise leaders for a full-on deep dive into cloud and AI.
The schedule looked like this:
- 08:00 — I arrived and got my registration done
- 10:00-11:00 — Opening Keynote
- 11:20-17:25 — Breakout Sessions, Workshops, Chalk Talks, Code Talks, and GameDay
- 16:40-17:25 — Closing keynote with Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon
- 17:25-18:30 — Networking Reception
Keynote Speakers
The keynote lineup was stacked. Here’s who I caught throughout the day:
- Dr. Werner Vogels — VP & CTO, Amazon.com (closing keynote and throughout the day)
- Francessca Vasquez — VP of Professional Services & Agentic AI, AWS
- Alison Kay — VP and Managing Director, AWS UK & Ireland
- Greg Bard — Multiple sessions across the day
The overarching theme resonated clearly all day long: agentic AI is no longer the future. It’s happening now, and AWS is putting serious resources behind it.
My Key Takeaways
1. Agentic AI is the big story. AWS is heavily investing in making AI agents practical for enterprise use. The announcements around Bedrock support for multi-agent workflows, automated planning and tool-use capabilities, and the launch of Agent Core are significant. This isn’t just hype anymore — AWS is building the infrastructure for autonomous AI systems to operate in production environments.
2. Amazon Nova is getting very interesting. I saw a session on how Ocado achieved 80% faster product onboarding using Amazon Nova and fine-tuning. The Multimodal model was impressive — strong vision and language capabilities at a fraction of the cost of comparable models. For anyone doing multimodal applications, this is worth paying attention to.
3. Code Talks were the highlight. If you’re technical, the Code Talks deserve special mention. Experts showed the “why” behind AWS solutions through live coding. I followed along with several demos and gained practical insights I can immediately apply to my own projects. The interactive Q&A format made these sessions far better than standard presentations.
4. Serverless computing keeps getting simpler. The sessions on Lambda, EventBridge, and the broader serverless ecosystem reinforced how far the platform has come. If you’re not leveraging serverless yet, the bar to entry is lower than ever.
5. Security and compliance are top priorities. From zero-trust architectures to automated compliance frameworks, AWS showed how cloud-native security can be both robust and manageable. The emphasis on “secure by default” design resonated throughout multiple sessions.
Notable Sessions I Attended
- A complete guide to Amazon EVS (MAM202) — Great deep-dive into Amazon Elastic Vulkan Service for VMware workloads
- A practitioner’s guide to data for agentic AI (ANT305) — Essential viewing for anyone building AI agents
- A2C – the On-ramp for IT Professional Services (STU101) — Useful for agencies and consultants diving deeper into AWS
- 80% Faster Product Onboarding with Amazon Nova & Fine-Tuning (AIM305) — Ocado’s case study was eye-opening
- 500-level sessions — Discussions with principal engineers on next-generation architectures
The Atmosphere
Excel London was buzzing. The energy from attendees — from small teams to enterprise architects — was infectious. The networking reception at the end was a great chance to connect with fellow developers and AWS experts. The food was decent, the WiFi was solid (obviously), and the whole event ran smoothly.
AWS clearly invested in making this more than just a series of presentations. The workshops, GameDay, and interactive labs provided hands-on learning that you just can’t get from reading documentation. I particularly enjoyed the gamified learning competitions — great for teams and genuinely educational.
Was it worth it?
As someone who’s spent years working with cloud infrastructure, security, and AI, I’d say yes — absolutely worth it. The depth of technical content was outstanding, and the chance to learn from AWS principal engineers and applied scientists was invaluable. The new Code Talks format was a first and will make future events even better.
For organisations exploring AWS for the first time, or teams looking to deepen their cloud and AI capabilities, this event delivers. The free access model (yes, it really is free) makes it an unbeatable opportunity for learning and networking.
If you’re watching from home, the livestream option makes the content broadly accessible. AWS is clearly positioning this as a must-attend event for anyone involved in cloud and AI, whether you’re just starting out deep in the technology.
Watch this space — I’ll be posting more specific session deep-dives over the coming days as the insights sink in a bit more. And honestly, after a day like today, I might need to take a day off from other things just to digest everything I learned. 😄