There's a special category of professional event where, the morning after, you find yourself staring at a cold hotel coffee drawing arrows between napkin notes because everything suddenly connects. I've walked out of exactly three conferences in my career feeling that way. Two of them were Atlassian events.

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So when the dates for Team '26 landed on my calendar, I may have done a small happy dance that my office cat found highly suspicious.

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Let me tell you why this year's event deserves your attention — whether you're flying to Anaheim or watching from your kitchen.

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The headline facts

Team '26 runs May 5-7, 2026 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The theme this year is "Unlock human-AI collaboration at scale," and Atlassian is calling it the global conference for AI-forward teams, their leaders, and the apps and agents that fuel them. That phrasing is not accidental. Atlassian is telling us, in plain English, where the entire portfolio is heading.

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If you can't make it to Southern California, here's the part I genuinely wish more vendors copied: there's a free digital pass. The livestream runs May 6-7, and the on-demand library drops on May 11. You can register without spending a dollar, which means the "I'm too busy for this" excuse has officially run out of steam.

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Why this year's Team matters more than usual

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Here's the curiosity-gap question I'd want to ask a room full of product and IT leaders: if the single biggest shift in your tech stack over the next twelve months weren't going to be a tool, but a teammate, would you change how you plan FY27?

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That's the premise of Team '26. Atlassian has spent the last two years quietly building the connective tissue between Jira, Confluence, Loom, Jira Product Discovery, Jira Service Management, and Rovo — and now the AI agents are walking onto the floor. The May 7 livestream is specifically dedicated to putting AI teammates to work with specialized skills that help every team work faster and smarter.

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Atlas Camp 2026 in Amsterdam previewed some of this back in March. Teamwork Graph now has connectors and APIs that let developers add external data and build apps and agents on top of it, and Forge-hosted LLMs powered by Amazon Bedrock let developers ship AI features without having to manage model infrastructure. Translation: the platform is opening up, and the ecosystem is about to get very interesting.

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If you're the person at your company who owns the "how does work actually happen here" question, Team '26 is the three-day masterclass you didn't know you'd been waiting for.

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The speaker lineup is, in a word, stacked

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Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian CEO and co-founder, will be on the mainstage — and he has a long history of announcing the things everyone has been waiting for. Joining him:

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Ethan Mollick, the Wharton professor and artificial intelligence thought leader, whose book Co-Intelligence has become mandatory reading for anyone trying to think clearly about AI and knowledge work. Emily Chang, the Emmy Award–winning journalist who can interview her way out of any soundbite. And Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and founder of Seven Seven Six — a guy with strong, tested opinions about community, platforms, and what makes teams actually work.

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That's not a "we booked whoever was available" lineup. That's a curation.

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The part nobody puts in the brochure

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Here's what I tell every client who asks whether Team is worth the flight: the keynotes are great, but Team is really won on the Expo Floor, in the hallway conversations, and during something Atlassian calls Braindates. These are one-on-one and group conversations on topics you want to discuss — only available at Team '26. In my humble opinion, it's the single best-designed networking mechanic at any tech conference. You post a topic you care about. Other humans sign up. You meet. You talk about that specific thing. No small talk. No forced icebreakers.

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Add in 1:1 sessions with Atlassian product experts, the Atlassian Williams F1 Team presence (yes, the F1 partnership is on display — bring a camera), and some very persuasive numbers from past attendees: 96% of attendees learned something that helped solve a business challenge. 88% of companies found new solutions and tools. 78% connected with product and solution experts. And 305 companies attend as a team with two or more people.

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Those numbers are, if anything, conservative based on what I've seen from clients who've gone.

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How we're thinking about Team '26 at Avaratak

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As an Atlassian Solution Partner, here's the honest frame I'm giving our clients who are on the fence:

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If you're evaluating a major Atlassian expansion, consolidation, or migration in the next 12 months, go. In person. You'll compress three months of vendor calls into three days, and you'll make decisions with more confidence on the plane home.

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If you're an Atlassian admin or platform lead, go. The 1:1 support sessions alone are worth the pass, and you'll leave with a peer network that saves you hours every month for years.

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If budget or calendar just won't cooperate this year, grab the free digital pass today. Block May 6 and 7 on your calendar. Watch the keynotes live. Bookmark the on-demand library when it goes live May 11. Then bring what you learned to your team lead. And if you want a thinking partner to debrief with, we'll be taking notes too.

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The one group I'd gently push hardest to attend in person: leadership teams who are still treating AI as a "we'll figure it out next quarter" item. Team '26 is going to be less a feature announcement event and more a crash course in what human-plus-AI collaboration actually looks like at scale. That's a tectonic shift, and the organizations that move first set the pace for their industries.

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The forward-thinking bit

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We talk with clients all the time about the difference between adopting tools and rewiring how work happens. The first is a line item. The second is a competitive advantage. Atlassian is very clearly building toward the second, and Team '26 is where they're going to show us what it looks like when every team — not just engineering, not just product, not just IT — has AI teammates with specialized skills working alongside them.

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Whether you're flying to Anaheim or firing up the livestream from your kitchen, you're going to leave with a sharper picture of what the next two years of teamwork will actually look like. That is, objectively, a good use of a Tuesday through Thursday in May.

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If you want to compare notes on the sessions worth prioritizing, need help building a business case to bring your team along, or just want to know where to get the good coffee near the convention center, our inbox is open at avaratak.com. Anaheim in May — we'll be there.

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See you on the Expo Floor.

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