Microsoft returns to San Francisco for Build 2026 after a decade away, but the company's developer conference opening June 2 at Fort Mason Center is not about hardware or Windows 12. It is about one thing: agents.
CEO Satya Nadella kicks off the two-day event at 9:30 a.m. PT with a keynote the company has billed as "no fluff." In-person tickets run $1,099, and the keynote streams free on build.microsoft.com and YouTube.
"Agent Mode is now the default mode across several Office 365 Copilot products, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint," Nadella said during Microsoft's latest earnings call, describing the company's shift from synchronous assistants to "async coworkers that can execute long-running tasks across key domains."
Build's session catalog makes the strategic priority explicit. The conference is organized around agentic AI workflows, GitHub Copilot advances, Azure AI Foundry platform updates, and Windows-native AI development.
Microsoft Agent 365, the enterprise control plane for AI agents, reached general availability on May 1, and the conference will expand on that foundation.
Microsoft has confirmed no Windows 12 announcement is on the agenda. Windows Central's Zac Bowden reported that 2027 is the earliest realistic announcement window, debunking viral speculation about a 2026 launch. The "Hudson Valley" and "CorePC" codenames circulating online trace back to internal 2023 projects tied to Windows 11 planning, not a new OS.
Instead, Build will focus on Windows as a developer platform for local AI. Windows local AI is a dedicated conference track, with sessions covering APIs for on-device model execution and Microsoft's Foundry Local tool. The May 30 Windows 11 Insider build shipped a customizable Start menu and expanded local AI capabilities ahead of the keynote.
Microsoft is also deepening its WinUI 3 push. Rudy Huyn, Partner Architect at Microsoft, confirmed in March he is forming a dedicated team to build 100% native Windows apps using WinUI 3, ending reliance on WebView2 wrappers. The Start menu itself is being rebuilt in WinUI to reduce latency. Benchmarks from software engineer Beth Pan show a 25% performance improvement for WinUI 3's File Explorer component, with 41% fewer memory allocations and 45% fewer function calls.
One of the more pressing questions, how to give AI agents system access without creating security liabilities, gets its own session. "Claws on Windows: Designing Safe, Bounded Agent Actions" examines real design failures and how developers can architect safer alternatives.
OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger is hosting a breakout session.
GitHub Copilot also features prominently, with sessions on multi-agent support inside VS Code and deeper GitHub-Azure integration. Copilot CLI reached general availability in March, and Build is expected to extend that into multi-agent terminal workflows. The Information reported Microsoft may introduce a new coding model to expand GitHub Copilot adoption, alongside models specializing in advanced reasoning, images, and speech.
Build 2026 runs June 2-3 at Fort Mason Center, with all sessions available on demand after the event.
