CNCF Report: Global Cloud Native Developer Community Nears 20 Million
Cloud Native Now, Thursday, March 26th, 2026
A report published this week by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) estimates there are now nearly 20 million cloud native application developers, representing 39% of the worldwide developer community.
Revealed at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe conference, the estimate of the total size of the cloud-native application developer community is based on an analysis of GitHub/Stack Overflow account activity and employment statistics from the U.S. and European Union (EU).
Since the last time CNCF published a similar report six months ago, the estimate of the size of the cloud-native application development community has increased from 15.6 to 19.9 million developers, a 28% increase. Among backend developers, 52% are now classified as cloud native, up from 49% six months ago, the report projects. The total number of backend developers, however, declined from 58% six months ago.