Seattle in early October was alive with possibility. Against the backdrop of the city’s skyline and the calm shimmer of the waterfront, the data-orchestration community came together for Airflow Summit 2025, three full days, from October 7 to 9, at the heart of the Emerald City. Engineers, architects, open-source contributors, and community builders from across the world gathered to explore what’s next for Apache Airflow as it steps confidently into its 3.0 era.
The opening keynote unveiled Airflow 3.0, a milestone release that redefines how teams think about orchestration, introducing greater flexibility, performance, and observability. The message resonated: orchestration is no longer just about getting jobs to run on time, it’s about building intelligent, resilient systems that adapt as data, scale, and business needs evolve.
Throughout the sessions, that idea echoed in every conversation. Talks covered everything from distributed DAG execution to hybrid-cloud orchestration, AI-powered workflows, and real-time analytics.
In the hallways, people huddled over laptops comparing setups, debated DAG dependency strategies, and shared lessons learned from running Airflow at scale. In workshops, newcomers built their first pipelines under the guidance of core contributors. Between sessions, spontaneous meetups turned into collaborations, and local user groups found new ways to connect their regional communities to the global one.
As the second day faded into the Seattle dusk, conversations drifted towards the future of Airflow, of data engineering, of open source itself. The closing session reflected that mood perfectly: a mix of gratitude and anticipation. Screens played back flashes of the previous days, panels, laughter, workshops, people meeting for the first time but talking like old colleagues.
Yet the story didn’t end there. One week later, the community gathered once again, this time online, for Airflow Summit Online Reconnect, a free virtual edition created for those who couldn’t attend in person. It featured recorded keynotes, new talks from speakers who couldn’t travel, and live sessions hosted on Airmeet that kept the spirit of inclusion alive. The goal wasn’t to replicate Seattle, but to extend it, to make sure everyone, regardless of location, could be part of the same flow.
Together, both editions, in-person and online told a single, continuous story: of connection. Airflow Summit 2025 wasn’t just about pipelines or codebases; it was about the people who build, maintain, and expand them. It reminded everyone that orchestration isn’t only a technical concept, it’s a human one.
As the lights dimmed on St. John’s Terminal just a few months before, so they did again in Seattle: closing not a chapter, but opening the next. The workflows continue, the community grows, and the orchestration story, like data itself, never stops moving.
Teyza Ponce