// A
Hands-on labs
Ninety-minute workshops with real infrastructure provided — you leave with a running artifact, not a slide deck. Thirty seats each, instructors stay for office hours.
Oct 8–10, 2026
Meridian Hall · Harbor District
+ Global live stream
Three days with the people who build what you build on.
84 engineers on stage. 120 sessions. Zero vendor keynotes. SYNTAX is where runtime maintainers, database internals people, and the teams running the world's largest systems compare notes — in public.
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// 01 — Why SYNTAX
A conference with an opinion.
Every talk is invited or blind-reviewed by working engineers. Sponsors buy booths — never stage time.
That one rule changes everything. Speakers show real incident timelines, real profiler output, and real regrets. Attendees ask harder questions because the person answering actually wrote the code.
Now in its sixth year, SYNTAX has become the annual sync point for the people maintaining the infrastructure everyone else abstracts away. If your job title contains the word "platform", these are your people.
3Days on site
120Sessions & labs
84Speakers on stage
6,000Seats in the hall
140+Countries on stream
0Vendor keynotes
// 02 — Lineup
People who wrote the tools in your stack.
Hover a card — or hit the bio button — for the short version of a long CV.
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Amara Okafor
Distinguished Engineer, Verdine
"The GC pause you can't see" · Day 1
Amara Okafor
Amara spent a decade making managed runtimes behave in unmanaged places. She led Verdine's tail-latency programme and maintains three profiling tools you probably already run in CI.
Day 1 · 09:00 · Main Stage
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Jonas Lindqvist
VP Infrastructure, Kolab
"Zero-copy everything" · Day 1
Jonas Lindqvist
Jonas runs the platform group behind 40 billion requests a day. His team deleted more code last year than most companies ship, and throughput went up. He will explain how.
Day 1 · 10:30 · Systems Stage
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Priya Raghavan
Principal Engineer, Octave Data
"Postgres at the edge of physics" · Day 1
Priya Raghavan
Priya has committed to Postgres internals for nine years and keeps a public notebook of every planner regression she has ever chased. Her talks routinely change how teams index.
Day 1 · 11:30 · Systems Stage
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Lena Fischer
WebAssembly Core Team
"The browser is the OS now" · Day 2
Lena Fischer
Lena works on the WebAssembly component model and has shipped code into every major browser engine. She argues the web platform is finally ready for your worst workloads.
Day 2 · 09:00 · Main Stage
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Mateo Ibarra
Creator, Fathom.js
"Reactivity from first principles" · Day 2
Mateo Ibarra
Mateo built Fathom.js after profiling 200 production apps and deciding the framework tax was too high. Two years later it powers some of the fastest interfaces on the web.
Day 2 · 10:30 · Web Stage
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Sofia Mendes
Head of DevEx, Brightline
"Design systems your compiler can enforce" · Day 2
Sofia Mendes
Sofia's team cut Brightline's UI defect rate by 70% by moving design rules into the type system. She publishes everything, including the failures that got them there.
Day 2 · 15:00 · Web Stage
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Yuki Tanaka
Security Researcher, Nullfield
"Threat modeling LLM toolchains" · Day 3
Yuki Tanaka
Yuki has disclosed 30+ vulnerabilities in agent frameworks this year alone. Their live demos are the reason this session has a strict no-recording policy on one segment.
Day 3 · 10:30 · Security Stage
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Dele Adeyemi
Staff Engineer, Meridian Labs
"Agents in prod: a post-mortem" · Day 3
Dele Adeyemi
Dele ran the first fully agent-operated deploy pipeline at scale — and then wrote the honest incident review everyone forwarded. The closing keynote picks up where that document ends.
Day 3 · 09:00 · Main Stage
// +76 more speakers on the full lineup — announced weekly
Lock in your seat// 03 — Schedule
Three days. Three tracks. No filler.
Every slot below is confirmed. Workshops are capped at 30 seats and sell out first.
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09:00
Keynote
Software is eating its own tail
Amara Okafor · Main Stage
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10:30
Talk
Zero-copy everything: the I/O path in 2026
Jonas Lindqvist · Systems Stage
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11:30
Talk
Postgres at the edge of physics
Priya Raghavan · Systems Stage
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13:30
Lab
Profiling production without fear
Amara Okafor · Workshop Rooms · 30 seats
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15:00
Talk
The lies latency graphs tell
Panel of SRE leads · Systems Stage
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17:00
Lightning
Lightning talks: 8 talks × 6 minutes
Community track · Main Stage
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09:00
Keynote
The browser is the OS now. Act like it.
Lena Fischer · Main Stage
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10:30
Talk
Fathom.js: rebuilding reactivity from first principles
Mateo Ibarra · Web Stage
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11:30
Talk
Edge rendering is a distributed systems problem
Platform team, Kolab · Web Stage
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13:30
Lab
WASM beyond the demo: shipping a real component
Lena Fischer · Workshop Rooms · 30 seats
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15:00
Talk
Design systems your compiler can enforce
Sofia Mendes · Web Stage
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16:30
Panel
Frameworks in 2030: five maintainers, one whiteboard
Moderated debate · Main Stage
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09:00
Keynote
Agents in prod: a post-mortem
Dele Adeyemi · Main Stage
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10:30
Talk
Threat modeling LLM toolchains
Yuki Tanaka · Security Stage
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11:30
Talk
GPU schedulers: the new kernel wars
Infra track · Systems Stage
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13:30
Lab
Evals that actually predict incidents
Nullfield team · Workshop Rooms · 30 seats
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15:30
Closing
Closing: what we ship next
All keynote speakers · Main Stage
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19:00
Social
Afterparty on the pier
Everyone · Harbor Deck
// All times local to the hall. The live stream shows your timezone automatically.
// 04 — Experience
Built for the hallway as much as the stage.
The talks are recorded. The conversations are not. We design the venue around the second thing.
// B
The hallway track
No talk overlaps lunch. Topic tables, quiet corners, and whiteboards every forty metres. If you came to meet the maintainer, this is where it happens.
// C
Expo, minus the cringe
Forty booths that passed a technical bar: live demos and engineers who can answer follow-ups. Badge scanners are opt-in, always.
// D
Night sessions
Live podcast tapings, the infamous SYNTAX quiz, a retro arcade, and an afterparty on the pier with the entire speaker lineup in attendance.
Not flying? The stream is not an afterthought.
Every stage, multi-camera, with live captions in 12 languages, a moderated global chat, and replays within the hour. Broadcast pass holders get the same Q&A queue as the room.
// 05 — Tickets
Pick your badge.
Last year sold out nine weeks early. Prices rise when the current allocation runs out.
Broadcast
// watch from anywhere
$149
per person · all 3 days
- Every stage, live in multi-camera
- Live captions in 12 languages
- Replays for 12 months
- Global chat + speaker Q&A queue
- In-person access
- Workshop labs
Most popular
Conference
// the full three days, in the room
$649
per person · all 3 days
- All stages, all three days
- Expo floor + hallway track
- Lunch, coffee, night sessions
- Afterparty on the pier
- Replays for 12 months
- Workshop labs
Pro
// for people who came to build
$1,199
per person · all 3 days
- Everything in Conference
- 2 guaranteed workshop lab seats
- Speaker dinner invitation
- Priority keynote seating
- Replay bundle to share with your team
- Badge printed while you watch
All prices in $, taxes included · Teams of 5+ save 20% · Full refunds until 30 days out, transfers anytime.
// 06 — FAQ
Good questions.
What is the refund policy?
Full refunds until 30 days before doors, no questions asked. After that you can transfer your badge to a colleague any time — even the morning of Day 1 — from your ticket dashboard.
What exactly does the Conference pass include?
All three days across every stage, the expo floor, lunch and unlimited coffee, night sessions, the afterparty, and 12 months of replays. Workshop labs are the only extra — they are capped at 30 seats and bundled with the Pro pass.
Is the live stream really every stage?
Yes — all stages, multi-camera, with live captions in 12 languages. Broadcast pass holders join the same moderated Q&A queue as the room, and replays land within an hour of each session ending.
What accessibility support is available?
Live captions on every stage, step-free access throughout the venue, a quiet room on each floor, reserved sightline seating on request, and dietary options for every catering service. Email the team from your ticket dashboard for anything specific — we will make it work.
Can my company sponsor or send a group?
Teams of 5+ save 20% automatically at checkout. Sponsors get booths, brand placement, and our genuine gratitude — but never stage time. The sponsor prospectus is available from the footer once applications open.
// Final call
Badges are printing.
6,000 engineers. 84 speakers. One hallway track you will still be talking about in March. The current price tier closes when the allocation does.
// 71% of last year's attendees rebooked within a week
Not ready to commit?
Get the weekly speaker drops, schedule updates, and a heads-up before each price tier closes. One email a week, never more.
You're on the list. First speaker drop lands this week — see you in October.