Cockroach Labs has been hosting our annual database conference since 2022, and I'm honored to be MCing RoachFest London for the third year running. Yes, I’m the Technical Evangelist for CockroachDB, but it’s not the contractual obligation that keeps me coming back. It’s because at RoachFest I am released unto the world, like Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé are released at Christmas time.
Every year, I get to stand in a room full of people who genuinely care about distributed systems, resilience, and building things that don't break at 3 AM.
We hear from the people building CockroachDB, the people running it in production, and the people evaluating it for the first time.
That combination – in person, in real time – makes for an ecosystem of learning and serendipitous encounters; something a webinar simply can't replicate.
This year's event is on June 25th at Convene in London, and we’re setting the stage with the theme “Operate without fear. Build with confidence. Adapt to the AI era.” These principles have never been more important.
Who's speaking at RoachFest London 2026?
The main stage lineup features a CEO keynote on the future of database architecture, real-world resilience stories from a payments infrastructure leader, a panel on durable state for AI agents, and a product roadmap session you won't want to miss. Let me walk you through it.
Spencer Kimball, our Co-Founder and CEO, will deliver the keynote: "The New Database Estate." Each year at RoachFest, Spencer previews the work ahead, and this year he's asking the question every infrastructure team needs to hear: “What happens when agentic AI doesn't just add traffic, but changes the scale equation entirely?” He'll make the case that distributed databases are about to go from a niche luxury to a fundamental requirement for every enterprise, and show what CockroachDB is building to meet that moment.
Next up, Kevin Holditch, VP of Engineering at Form3, will share how their real-time payment platform survives cloud outages – and by survive, I don’t mean “keeps limping on”, I mean thrives during these events. Form3 has evolved into a cloud-agnostic, active/active/active architecture spanning AWS, GCP, and Azure, all powered by CockroachDB. The part that gets me? They validate their disaster recovery by intentionally shutting down an entire cloud provider for 24 hours. In production. For tier-1 banks. That's the kind of resilience story you can bring home to meet the parents.
I’m moderating a panel: "What does it take to build long-term state for AI agents?" Joining me will be Adam B. Struck, CEO of Memori Labs, and Jordan Legg, Chief AI Officer at Takara AI. Everyone agrees AI agents need memory, but the harder question is what "memory" actually means in production. We'll dig into the tradeoffs behind semantic retrieval, SQL-native memory layers, and how to keep agent state consistent, scalable, and useful over time.
You'll also hear payments infrastructure leaders Primer.io share their CockroachDB journey, and Igor Stanko, our VP of Product, taking you inside the CockroachDB roadmap. He’ll cover:
Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)
AI-powered migration tooling
Our approach to making CockroachDB the most price-performant database at scale
And more… 😉
What's new at RoachFest London this year?
This year we’ll have two new hands-on workshops, a second stage, and one very candid conversation with our CEO.
Our morning workshops are led by Cockroach Labs engineers. One covers core concepts and architecture: distributed SQL fundamentals, the Raft consensus protocol, survivability, multi-region strategies. The other dives into transactional vector search and RAG on CockroachDB, including why ACID transactions change the game for AI applications. Both run from 9 AM to noon, and they're a fantastic way to go deep before the main stage kicks off.
We're also introducing the Crawl Space, our informal, up-close-and-personal second stage. You'll catch sessions like "This or That" with Jordan from Takara AI, and "Straight from the Field" with Cockroach Labs Staff Sales Engineer Anna Eriksson, who talks to a ton of engineering teams. She'll be judging architecture decisions in real time, and you'll want a front-row seat.
And then there's "Spill the Tea with Spencer Kimball." He’ll be fired up to field tough questions, spin off some hot takes, and share very direct opinions. Nothing will be spared, from AI hype cycles to database drama, and the creative comments people share with him about our beloved “Cockroach” moniker.
We treasure our partners, and several of them will be onsite. Experience workshops and expert demos from our friends at Ory, Memori Labs, Ispirer, Authzed, Teleport, and Takara.
Why is an astronaut speaking at a database conference?
When you spend your career in pursuit of systems that survive failure, nothing beats meeting someone who’s survived the ultimate high-pressure environment.
Major Tim Peake CMG is joining us on the RoachFest stage. Major Peake is a former Army Air Corps officer, test pilot, and the European Space Agency's first British astronaut to travel to the International Space Station (ISS). He spent six months aboard the ISS as part of the Principia mission, conducting over 250 scientific experiments and performing a spacewalk.
Major Tim Peake CMG
When I first demoed CockroachDB to a handful of colleagues back in early 2017, I never imagined this journey would lead to sharing the stage with an astronaut. Life, eh?
Major Peake’s talk, "Operating Without Fear: What Space Missions Teach Us About Resilience," speaks directly to the heart of RoachFest. In space, failure is not an option, but it is always a possibility. Success requires rigorous preparation, redundancy, teamwork, and the ability to shine when faced with the unexpected. Sound familiar? Whether you're preparing for a spacewalk or readying your database infrastructure for the next outage, it’s the same mindset: resilience is the foundation of every successful mission.
RoachFest London 2026 is on June 25th at Convene in London. Whether you're a CockroachDB expert user, actively evaluating distributed SQL, or just curious about what the community looks like in person, come along. If not for our amazing customers and team, or for a literal rocket man, then at least for my dulcet tones.
Visit here for the full details on RoachFest London 2026, and to register.
Operate, Build, and Adapt
RoachFest London is your front-row seat to the future of databases. Learn from experts, get hands-on in workshops, and connect with the community. Register for June 25!
Rob Reid is a technical evangelist at Cockroach Labs and the MC of RoachFest London 2026. Visit Rob’s author page for a full bio.
