Anthropic has gone from running one developer event in one city to pulling off a full international tour – and the AI industry is paying close attention. The company officially announced Code with Claude 2026, its second annual developer conference, now expanded to three cities across three continents: San Francisco on May 6, London on May 19, and Tokyo on June 10.

The first Code with Claude was announced in April 2025 and held on May 22, 2025, at The Midway in San Francisco – a relatively intimate gathering for a select group of developers and founders. That debut was focused squarely on real-world implementations using the Anthropic API, CLI tools, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The response from the developer community was apparently strong enough that Anthropic didn’t just bring it back – they scaled it up dramatically, crossing the Atlantic and the Pacific for the first time.

This year’s edition is built around three parallel programming tracks, each targeting a distinct layer of how engineers actually work with Claude. The Research track gives attendees a direct line to the Anthropic researchers and engineers building the models themselves, covering what today’s systems can do and where they’re headed next. The Claude Platform track dives into how teams are shipping production-grade agents on Anthropic’s infrastructure. And then there’s the Claude Code track – arguably the most practically charged of the three – which gets into the specifics of running Claude Code at scale: long-horizon tasks, multi-repo work, and the infrastructure and parallel agents that make all of that possible.

The San Francisco event on May 6 is the most fully detailed of the three, and looking at the agenda, it’s not hard to understand why developers were excited. The day kicks off with an opening keynote featuring Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer Ami Vora, Head of Claude Code Boris Cherny, Head of Claude Platform Product Angela Jiang, and several other senior team members. From there, the day branches into parallel sessions that cover everything from “What’s New in Claude Code” and “Picking the Right Model” to real-world implementation stories from companies like Netflix, Vercel, GitHub, Datadog, Cursor, Replit, and more.

Netflix’s session caught attention in particular – titled “The AI-Native Engineer: How Netflix Moves Engineers Up the Claude Code Maturity Ladder,” it signals that some of the world’s largest tech companies aren’t just experimenting with AI-assisted coding tools – they’re building internal frameworks to systematically level up their entire engineering organizations using them. Similarly, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch is down on the agenda to present “How Vercel Builds for Model Step-Changes: A Tactical Playbook,” which hints at a broader conversation around how engineering orgs should architect themselves to stay fluid as AI model capabilities rapidly advance.

The conference also shines a spotlight on something that’s become increasingly central to how developers use Claude – Claude Managed Agents. There are multiple sessions and workshops dedicated to it, including “Get to Production 10x Faster with Claude Managed Agents” and a hands-on workshop called “Build a Production-Ready Agent with Claude Managed Agents.” It’s a clear signal that Anthropic wants developers to move beyond individual model calls and start building durable, autonomous agent pipelines that can handle complex workflows end to end.

For those who couldn’t grab an in-person seat – and demand was high enough that in-person applications have already closed – Anthropic is offering a full virtual livestream option, free of charge, so anyone in the world can tune in. Both in-person attendance and livestream access are completely free. In-person seats were distributed via a lottery system, with applicants notified of their status in early April.

But Anthropic didn’t stop there. Given that demand outpaced available room, the company introduced a spin-off format called Code with Claude: Extended – a second event running the day after the main conference in each city, specifically designed for independent developers and early-stage founders. The Extended format leans into founder stories, builder deep-dives, and laptops-open workshops from Anthropic’s Applied AI team. As the description on the official site puts it: “Code with Claude is where you hear what’s new. Extended is where you see it in the wild.”

The international expansion to London and Tokyo isn’t just symbolic. Anthropic has been steadily building its presence outside the US, and hosting developer events in two of the world’s major tech hubs – each with their own distinct developer ecosystems – sends a clear message that the company is serious about cultivating a truly global builder community around Claude. Tokyo’s event on June 10 rounds out the spring tour, giving developers in Asia a first real chance to engage with the teams behind the product in-person.

The full conference arc – from the original 2025 event to this expanded 2026 tour – reflects a broader shift happening at Anthropic. The company isn’t just a research lab releasing model updates anymore. It’s actively positioning Claude as a platform, one with a growing ecosystem of enterprise customers (GitHub, Netflix, Datadog, Asana), cloud partnerships (Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, Microsoft Foundry), and a dedicated developer community that it’s now investing real resources to nurture. Code with Claude 2026 is, in many ways, Anthropic’s version of a developer keynote moment – and if the speaker lineup and agenda are any indication, it’s aiming to be a genuinely substantive one.