Get Ready for kcp ContribFest at KubeCon Europe 2026!

Pack your laptop and mark your calendar! kcp is hosting a ContribFest session at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam on Thursday, March 26, from 11:00 to 12:15 CET in room G106. Read on to get yourself prepared beforehand and make the most out of the session!

What is ContribFest?

ContribFest is a track at KubeCon where CNCF projects host hands-on sessions working with their communities on real contributions. You don’t need to be an existing contributor — new community members are especially encouraged to join!

Our session, kcp: From Zero To Your First Pull Request, is a 75-minute guided workshop where you’ll explore the kcp architecture, set up a local dev environment, and submit your very first pull request — all with personal guidance from maintainers. Just bring some familiarity with Kubernetes and general development practices.

What to prepare before you get there

To maximize your time during the session, we recommend completing these preparation steps beforehand.

1. Learn about kcp

While smaller issues don’t require a deep knowledge of kcp, knowing the rough terminology, concepts, and architecture is a good starting point:

• Terminology
• Architecture
• Tenancy

2. Fork the repos

You’ll have the option to contribute to several kcp ecosystem repositories. To get started, follow the GitHub “Forking a repository” guide and fork the ones you’re interested in:

• kcp — the core project
• api-syncagent — synchronization agent for APIs
• multicluster-provider — multi-cluster provider for controller-runtime
• kcp-operator — Kubernetes operator for deploying kcp
• helm-charts — Helm charts for kcp

3. Set up your local environment

kcp is written in Go — you’ll need a working Go toolchain installed. We have a few ways to run a local environment:

• Single shard (recommended for most development): In most cases it is enough to go run the kcp binary to run a single root shard with no proxy. Follow the quickstart guide to get started.
• Tilt multi-shard with front proxy: For testing cross-shard features, you can use the Tilt-based multi-shard setup.
• Sharded test server: Another option for sharded testing is the sharded-test-server.

The components don’t necessarily require a running kcp instance to develop — some have enough options for unit and e2e tests that usually include running kcp in some form.

4. Test your setup

Let’s do a quick test to confirm everything is working:

1. Navigate to your cloned fork of the kcp repo
2. From the root, run make build
3. Then start a local kcp instance: ./bin/kcp start
4. If kcp starts and you can connect with kubectl --kubeconfig .kcp/admin.kubeconfig, you’re all set!

5. Find something to work on

We label issues that should be a good entry point for new contributors as “good first issue”. Browse the curated lists below to find something that interests you — and feel free to claim one ahead of time! Of course, if you feel brave, you can also tackle other issues.

• kcp
• api-syncagent
• multicluster-provider
• kcp-operator
• helm-charts

Bonus: Check out the contribution guides

Take some time to read through the contribution guides to get familiar with the overall process:

• kcp Contributing Guide

Getting help

Development topics are discussed mostly in our channel #kcp-dev on the Kubernetes Slack. If you don’t have a Kubernetes Slack account yet, get your invite here: https://slack.kubernetes.io/

Don’t hesitate to reach out before, during, or after the session — we’re always happy to see new contributors to kcp!

👋 See you in Amsterdam!

On behalf of the ContribFest co-hosts, thanks for following along! We look forward to meeting you in Amsterdam and working together on your first (or next!) kcp contribution. Make sure to say hello!