Significant contributors to this article include Megan O’Keefe, Senior Staff Developer Advocate, and Karl Weinmeister, Director of Developer Relations.
Whether you are joining us in person in Las Vegas or tuning in virtually from around the world, Google Cloud Next ’26 offers a deep look into the practical evolution of AI. With 89% of sessions this year dedicated to artificial intelligence, the focus has shifted from high-level concepts to the “Day 2” reality of building and maintaining agentic systems.
We’ve assembled 55+ new codelabs across Cloud at Next, and we want to share 10 highlights with you. The following curated list of codelabs is designed to help you translate the announcements from the talks and demos into functional code. These labs provide a structured way to explore the latest in multi-agent orchestration, data grounding, and enterprise security for your own workflows.
Dive into Codelabs!
1—Build Rich Agent Experiences (ADK + A2UI) | Codelab
Improve user interaction through intuitive, high-quality interfaces that allow users to interact with agentic systems seamlessly.
2—Building a Multi-Agent System | Codelab
Build the architecture required to make multiple agents work together to achieve a shared goal.
3—Beyond the Simple SELECT: AlloyDB NL2SQL | Codelab
Democratize data access by building systems that allow users to query complex databases using natural language, supported by high-speed vector search.
4—Beat Fraud with an AI Shield (Spanner & BigQuery Graph) | Codelab
Implement real-time reasoning with Spanner and BigQuery Graph databases. Analyze complex relationships in your data to prevent fraud at the point of transaction.
5—Building Secure Agents: Protecting Access and Data | Codelab
Protect the reasoning engine withModel Armor and Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage agent access and ensure that sensitive data remains protected during execution.
6—Ground Agents with Google Maps Platform | Codelab
Use Geo-intelligent logistics to ground your agents in real-world location data to optimize field operations and logistics in real-time.
7—Deploy and Scale Agents on Agent Engine | Codelab
Deploy agents as containerized microservices that scale dynamically with your workload.
8—The Ultimate Guide to Cloud Run: From Zero to Production | Codelab
Achieve rapid deployment using this lab as a blueprint for moving from a local prototype to a production-ready, auto-scaling platform on Cloud Run.
9—Developer Keynote: Building Agents with Skills | Codelab
Learn the ins and outs of AI agent development including Agent Development Kit (ADK), prompting, Agent Skill usage, and MCP.
10—General Keynote: Forecasting with AI Agents | Codelab
Transform unstructured chaos into actionable business intelligence in seconds.
Start Building Today
These codelabs will connect you to the heart of the conference. You’ll be able to bridge the high-level announcements, talks, and demos into the reality of the technology featured at Next ’26. Whether you’re here in person or attending virtually, these labs provide the concrete skills to drive real-world value during the conference and long after the conference ends.
And there’s more!
Go to the Codelab landing page to find the Cloud Next ’26 tag and access more than 75 total codelabs that support the featured tech at this year’s conference.
