AWS re:Invent 2025: An In-Depth Guide

AWS re:Invent is the world’s biggest cloud conference, created by leading global cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS). A learning conference for the international cloud community, AWS re:Invent has grown to become the no. 1 annual event for cloud enthusiasts the world over. Taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada, it is scheduled for December 1-5 this year. 

Naturally, the focus is on all things AWS, promoting AWS Cloud technology as a key mechanism for advancing your business and serving your customers, but there is something here for all cloud users. Attendees get access to literally hundreds of sessions on a huge range of topics, keynotes given by AWS leaders, and important opportunities to make lasting connections in the cloud community.

Interested? Here are a few things you need to know:

When and where is AWS re:Invent 2025 taking place?

AWS re:Invent always happens in Las Vegas. This year, it is scheduled for December 1-5. The event takes place across six venues: 

• Caesars Forum
• Encore
• Mandalay Bay
• MGM Grand
• The Venetian
• Wynn

You can get free, direct campus shuttle routes for any venue more than a 15-minute walk from another. You can also use the Las Vegas Monorail for free with your badge from MGM Grand, Horseshoe/Paris, Flamingo/Caesars Palace, and Harrah’s/The LINQ stations.

Pricing

A full conference pass costs $2,099. This entitles you to access to all the sessions — and there are hundreds to choose from! There is also a free, virtual option. ​​The virtual re:Invent features a livestream of keynotes and Innovation Talks and access to breakout sessions.

To register for the in-person event, you will need to create an AWS Events account and purchase by credit card. You have the option to buy Group passes if you are going to attend with colleagues.

Accommodation

As you might expect with an event this popular, all of the campus hotels are booking out quickly for AWS re:Invent 2025. You are advised to book accommodation on the strip, so that you can be close to all the venues and won’t have to depend on taxis to get to all your sessions. The organizers list all of the venue hotels mentioned earlier as “sleeping-room” hotels. 

Other sleeping-room hotels listed are:

• Treasure Island
• Mirage
• Harrah’s
• The LINQ
• Flamingo
•  Bellagio
• The Cosmopolitan
• Aria
• Signature at MGM
• Delano 

Transport

If you are traveling on foot, leave at least 30-45 minutes to get from one venue to another. You’ll find re:Invent ambassadors to guide you across the re:Invent campus. There are direct walking connections between Encore and Wynn (connected), a new bridge between Wynn and The Venetian, and a temporary indoor route between Caesars Forum and The Venetian during Expo hours.

Shuttles connect most of the properties,except between Wynn and The Venetian and between Caesars Forum and The Venetian. Each campus venue also offers rideshare and taxi pickup locations.

Bonus tip: re:Play is held at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, with dedicated shuttles and monorail return from SAHARA after the party.

You’ll find the latest technology on show at the re:Invent Expo, where you can engage directly with sponsors from industry-leading companies and learn from subject matter experts at sponsored speaking events. Sponsors are categorized as follows:

• Emerald: Including global professional services company Accenture, computing giant Intel, and monitoring and security platform Datadog
• Diamond: Including customer experience platform Salesforce and AI-powered developer platform GitHub.
• Platinum: Including security platform Snyk, authentication and authorization services provider Okta.
• Gold: Including Spacelift, internal developer portal Cortex, and secure password manager 1Password,
• Bronze: Including government technology distributor Carahsoft, incident management platform Incident.io, and secure infrastructure access platform Teleport
• Showcase: Including digital payments platform Stripe and connected workspace platform Notion.

We asked some of our DevOps engineers for their must-attend re:Invent sessions. These are some of the ones they have bookmarked (and don’t worry if there’s a clash — many of these are repeated):

1. DVT203 | AWS infrastructure as code: A year in review
2. COP349 | Balancing Agility and Compliance feat. The Digital Agency of Japan
3. OPN303 | Building agentic AI platform engineering solutions with open source
4. DVT304 | Deploy infrastructure with speed and safety using AWS CloudFormation 
5. DVT207 | Developer Experience Economics: Moving Past Productivity Metrics
6. DEV328 | Enterprise CI/CD: Advanced patterns for resilient deployments 
7. CNS205 | The future of Kubernetes on AWS
8. DVT205-S | Move fast & don’t break things: Maintaining software excellence as you adopt AI (sponsored by Cortex)
9. DEV318 | Optimize AWS Costs: Developer Tools and Techniques 
10. MAM332 | Platform engineering: From developer success to business value
11. SEC320 | The AWS Security Incident Response Challenge: Defend the Cake! 
12. DVT328 | Unlock development value in the age of AI-driven strategies

With access to the world’s leaders in cloud technology, all together in one place for a week, you probably need no convincing that AWS re:Invent is a must-attend event for cloud professionals. Between attending learning sessions and meeting AWS experts, you could absorb a year’s worth of learning in a single week. 

Here are just some of the benefits of attending re:Invent:

• Increase your expertise in core AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Aurora.
• Apply technical best practices in areas including cloud architecture, continuous deployment, large-scale migrations, and machine learning.
• Gain real, practical experience at technical bootcamps, self-paced labs, two-hour workshops, and hackathons.
• Meet cloud experts from all over the world and build truly valuable connections.

Before you embark on what promises to be a highlight of your year, think carefully about what you want to achieve with your first trip to AWS re:Invent 2025:

• Which sessions do you consider unmissable?
• Is in-person networking going to be a priority for you?
• What about hands-on learning?

Once you’ve set your priorities, make a plan for what to do during the day and after hours. 

Research: Review the AWS re:Invent campus map and figure out how you are going to navigate it to make sure you attend everything and don’t miss out on only-at-re:Invent opportunities. 

Be prepared: Before you fly, make sure you have everything you need to make the best impression. Whether it’s a glossy digital portfolio or sleek business cards, everything should align perfectly with your brand.

Pick your spots: There is no shortage of places to meet, so plan where you are going to have your business meetings in advance. Whether it’s a quiet cafe or a buzzing lounge, there is somewhere on the strip with the vibe you’re looking for. 

Have fun: After hours, Vegas really comes alive. Apart from the always-on entertainment everywhere, re:Invent has its own don’t-miss social events. Keep some energy for the re:Play Party on Thursday, December 4, 7:30 PM–midnight, at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.. This annual celebration features Weezer and a headlining DJ, plus a host of other acts. It promises to be an epic night! 

Hundreds of new capabilities and improvements were announced in Vegas last year. Here are just a few takeaways:  

• EKS Auto Mode + Hybrid Nodes: AWS introduced EKS Auto Mode to automate Kubernetes compute, storage, and networking management, and EKS Hybrid Nodes to let you attach on-prem hardware to EKS while AWS runs the control plane, which shrinks day-2 ops in both cloud and hybrid clusters. 
• Amazon Aurora DSQL (preview): A new serverless, distributed, PostgreSQL-compatible database built for global scale and high availability with minimal ops overhead — aimed at always-on apps without the usual multi-region complexity. 
• Amazon Q Developer for Ops: Q Developer gained agents that can generate docs, perform code reviews, create unit tests, and, critically for operators, help investigate and remediate operational issues directly from the AWS Console; plus a tighter GitLab Duo + Amazon Q integration. 
• Private, cross-account workflow integrations: EventBridge and Step Functions now natively reach private HTTPS endpoints across VPCs/accounts using PrivateLink and VPC Lattice, removing brittle proxy/Lambda workarounds for secure internal automations. 
• Amazon MemoryDB Multi-Region GA: Global, Redis-compatible caching with automatic conflict resolution and microsecond-level latency targets across regions, which is useful for multi-region control planes and low-latency state sharing. 

Spacelift loves re:Invent! We always have a full-strength team in Las Vegas to answer your questions about infrastructure management — and this year is no different. 

Find us at Booth #1533. We’ll have lots of great swag, a giveaway, and the friendliest and most knowledgeable team always ready to chat about how our product helps platform teams, DevOps practitioners, SREs, and application developers free up time to do work that adds real value.

Speed & Control Experience at AWS re:Invent

On Tuesday, December 2 from 7:00–10:00 PM PT, join Spacelift with friends from Cortex.io, Teleport, Incident.io, Glean, and Carahsoft at the brand-new F1 Arcade Las Vegas for an evening engineered for platform, DevOps, and SRE teams. 

Expect full-motion F1 simulators, premium food and drinks, a live DJ, and sweeping views of the Strip — the perfect way to shift gears after the expo. Bring a teammate, compare lap times, and network with practitioners who care about speed, governance, and operational control as much as you do.

Happy Hour with Datadog, Coder, Temporal, Spacelift, and RapidScale

Unwind after a packed day at re:Invent with an invite-only happy hour focused on visibility, control, and scaling your infrastructure. Mix with peers and partner teams over drinks at Gjelina inside The Venetian (conveniently steps off Restaurant Row) on Wednesday, December 3 at 6:00 PM. 

Space is limited, so plan to arrive on time and come ready to swap hard-won lessons from the field with folks who build and run the tools you use every day.

Attending re:Invent is not something you do on a whim; it requires considerable advance planning, so if you’re too late for this year, start making plans early for 2026. In the meantime, don’t forget about all the other valuable tech conferences out there. There’s something happening somewhere almost every week — your biggest issue might be trying to decide which ones to attend!

Don’t worry, we keep an up-to-date list of DevOps conferences and events to make it easier for you. 

AWS re:Invent is the highlight of the global cloud community’s calendar. Cloud professionals the world over gather to discover the latest industry developments, learn valuable skills, network with AWS experts, and meet friends old and new. Contributions from such cloud leaders as AWS CEO Adam Selipsky mean the quality of conference content is unrivaled.

With hundreds of sessions and opportunities for learning and networking, it makes sense to identify your priorities and plan your schedule in advance. We’ve highlighted sessions on everything from building serverless applications with Terraform to automating multi-tenant deployments. You can also book meetings in advance with industry-leading companies such as Spacelift.

We’ll be at Booth #1533. Drop by and discover why Spacelift and AWS make a perfect cloud match.