Google I/O 2026 set for May, spotlighting AI and agentic tools

Google has put its 2026 developer conference back at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, and made the clearest signal yet that its next wave of products will revolve around AI agents. The two-day I/O gathering was set for May 19 and 20, with a public online stream at io.google, underscoring that the company wants the event to reach far beyond the handful of people at Shoreline.

The main Google keynote was scheduled for May 19 from 10:00 am to 11:45 am PT, followed by a developer keynote from 1:30 pm to 2:45 pm PT. Google said the conference would cover updates in AI, Android, Chrome and Cloud, but this year’s framing went further, explicitly describing development as entering the “agentic era.” That language pointed to software that does not just answer prompts, but can carry out tasks, build workflows and support the kind of vibe-coding tools Google has been promoting for faster app creation.

For ordinary users, the most material shift is likely to show up in search, Android and Google’s consumer-facing AI products. Search is already under pressure to become more conversational and more useful for complex tasks, while Android remains the company’s main route to putting AI assistance in people’s hands every day. Chrome and Cloud were also part of the agenda, signaling that Google is treating AI as a layer across the web browser, workplace tools and its infrastructure business, not as a stand-alone feature.

Google also brought back its “Make Build Unlock” save-the-date puzzle, a small but telling sign that the company still sees I/O as part product showcase and part developer gameboard. And unlike the old invite-only conference model, Google said this year’s event was open to everyone online, with on-demand sessions, codelabs and more available after the live dates. That keeps the information pipeline wide open for developers, students and smaller businesses that do not have the budget to send teams to Mountain View.

The return to Shoreline also carried some history. Google I/O has been held there before, and a 2016 Google blog post described thousands of developers gathering at the amphitheatre for the conference. Nearly a decade later, Google was again using the same venue to frame its AI ambitions, with agents, Android and the rest of the company’s software stack positioned as the place where those ambitions were supposed to become real.