January 2026 Summaries

In a discussion on the "Grafana's Big Tent" podcast, Grafana's founder Torkel Ödegaard and other key figures from Grafana Labs reflect on the inception and evolution of Grafana over its 12 major releases. The conversation highlights Grafana's origins in application-level metrics, its expansion into business-level metrics, and the importance of its user-friendly design, which contributed to its widespread adoption. As Grafana continues to grow, the team emphasizes the significance of maintaining a robust open-source codebase, supporting around 200 data sources, and implementing improvements like schema-first APIs and dashboards-as-code. Looking forward, Grafana Labs is focused on enhancing the platform's scalability and multi-tenancy, exploring the integration of AI, and evolving the platform's design to meet future demands.

Grafana Labs is eagerly anticipating its participation in FOSDEM 2026, an event renowned for fostering open-source collaboration and innovation, taking place in Brussels from January 31 to February 1. The company's presence at the event will include a stand where attendees can engage with Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Mimir, Tempo, and Pyroscope, as well as a collaboration with Prusa Research, which uses Grafana for monitoring its 3D printer farm. Grafana Labs team members will deliver several talks focusing on Kubernetes, AI, and CPU performance, among other topics, highlighting the intersection of data analytics and observability. The event is expected to attract thousands of community members eager to share best practices and insights into the latest open-source developments.

Tempo 2.10 introduces several new features and enhancements, including advancements in TraceQL, the query language for trace selection, and improved cardinality management for the metrics-generator. Notable updates include the span:childCount intrinsic for analyzing trace structures, a new = nil operator for identifying missing attributes, and a simplified JSON format for LLM-optimized API responses. The release also enhances metrics generation with the introduction of entity-based limiting mode and the metric_overflow label to manage series overflow. Furthermore, the optional vParquet5 format improves query speed and storage efficiency, with dedicated attribute columns allowing for greater flexibility. The release is part of an ongoing effort to refine Tempo's architecture, with Project Rhythm promising scalability and reduced costs. Users can explore these updates in detail through the changelog and release notes, while Grafana Labs encourages community engagement via various platforms.

Grafana Labs has expanded its services to Japan by making Grafana Cloud and Grafana BYOC available via the AWS Tokyo Region, as announced on January 29, 2026. This expansion marks a significant step in the company's global reach, enhancing accessibility for users in Japan who can now leverage Grafana's capabilities in performance testing, observability, and logging, particularly through tools like Grafana Loki and Grafana k6. The move aligns with Grafana Labs' broader strategy to integrate advanced technologies like Kubernetes, AI, and machine learning into their offerings, as part of their ongoing development and scaling efforts, highlighted in upcoming events and releases such as Grafana 12 and the new Prometheus Remote Write v2 feature aimed at reducing network egress costs.

Volkov Labs, a longtime partner with Grafana Labs, announced its acquisition, leading Grafana Labs to take over the maintenance and development of Volkov's popular business intelligence plugins for Grafana. These plugins, initially created by Volkov Labs co-founder Mikhail Volkov, have become integral for users extending their observability practices to include business analytics. Grafana Labs has committed to a maintenance period until July 2026, ensuring compatibility with future Grafana releases and addressing bug fixes and security vulnerabilities. The plugins, such as Business Charts, Business Variable, and Business Media, facilitate dynamic visualizations and enhanced dashboard interactions, marking a significant step in integrating business analytics into Grafana's offerings. Grafana Labs aims to maintain seamless service for current users and plans to continue supporting these plugins through community channels and support forums.

Wilfried Roset, an engineering manager at OVHcloud, discusses building a synthetic monitoring solution using Grafana k6 to address performance issues in their observability strategy, particularly focusing on Jaeger's read path latency in a complex microservices architecture. Despite high service availability, users reported slow read times, prompting the need for a precise and independent measure of user experience to set reliable Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Synthetic monitoring with Grafana k6 enables the simulation of user journeys, providing unambiguous data to validate SLOs and prioritize engineering efforts. By deploying k6 probes, the team established a consistent signal of Jaeger's latency, moving from anecdotal reports to fact-based metrics. This method revealed a 75th percentile read latency of nearly 8 seconds, giving a solid basis for performance improvements. The approach highlights the importance of bridging internal service metrics with actual user experience, and future efforts will focus on further adopting distributed tracing and optimizing the OpenSearch cluster.

With the upcoming Grafana 13 release, an update to React 19 is set to enhance the platform's frontend interface, requiring plugin developers to make minor adjustments to ensure compatibility. This transition aligns Grafana with the latest React ecosystem advancements, addressing performance enhancements and new functionalities while mitigating risks associated with outdated dependencies. Developers are advised to conduct a dependency audit and utilize the @grafana/react-detect tool to identify potential issues, particularly focusing on breaking changes like the removal of certain APIs and internal React dependencies. Guidance is provided for addressing compatibility challenges, including updating webpack configurations and testing plugins against both React 19 and React 18 environments. The goal is to ensure plugins remain functional across multiple Grafana versions, and developers are encouraged to reach out to the Grafana community for support during this transition.

The Grafana Cloud app for Slack integrates AI-powered observability and incident response features directly into the Slack workspace, allowing engineering teams to manage system alerts, on-call schedules, and incidents without switching between platforms. This integration is designed to enhance collaboration by enabling natural language queries through Grafana Assistant, which provides insights into system health, error rates, and service involvement, all within Slack. By reducing the cognitive load and operational fragmentation during incidents, the app aims to streamline workflows and improve decision-making efficiency. The app is available in public preview and is included in all Grafana Cloud plans, offering a seamless experience for teams to manage alerts, notifications, and incident workflows without incurring additional costs. This integration aligns with the original vision of ChatOps by fitting naturally into existing team communication habits, thus providing practical, explanatory AI support rather than replacing human decision-making.

Grafana Labs' Voice of Customer (VoC) program in 2025 focused on actively integrating customer feedback into product development processes, emphasizing direct user engagement through a newly launched feedback portal. This initiative allowed users to submit ideas, vote on priorities, and track the progress of their feedback, leading to significant insights and product improvements, especially in areas like Incident Response Management (IRM), plugins, and alerting. The program tracked 2,160 new ideas and 6,867 votes, with customer-facing teams and community channels contributing valuable insights. Notably, the IRM area received 245 new ideas and 923 votes, resulting in 26 implemented improvements. As Grafana Labs moves into 2026, the focus is on enhancing feedback integration using AI-powered tools, embedding VoC insights into product planning, and leveraging the Customer Advisory Board for strategic input to ensure that customer voices continue to shape Grafana's development.

At Grafana Labs, hackathons are celebrated as a valuable opportunity for creativity and collaboration, with week-long projects often influencing product development. During a "Grafana’s Big Tent" podcast episode, hosts Mat Ryer and Matt Toback discussed with staff engineers the dynamics of these events, highlighting how they foster cross-team interactions, encourage innovative pitches, and emphasize a minimum viable product mindset. Participants prepare and share ideas in advance, and while not all projects become features, many do transition into significant product components, such as the Drilldown apps that altered user interactions with Grafana. The use of AI tools like Cursor has enhanced the hackathon experience by enabling the creation of functional software, although the emphasis remains on exploration and iteration rather than delivering feature-ready code. The engineers also touched on the playful creativity of hackathon projects, exemplified by ideas like applying observability metrics to chess games, and shared plans for future hackathon endeavors, demonstrating the ongoing impact and excitement these events generate within the company.

Grafana Cloud Fleet Management is a centralized control plane designed to efficiently manage telemetry collectors at scale within Grafana Cloud, primarily targeting Alloy collectors. It complements existing infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools like Terraform, enhancing the management of observability pipelines across distributed environments, such as cloud-native infrastructures and edge computing setups. Fleet Management allows users to remotely configure, monitor, and optimize telemetry pipelines, reducing manual intervention and ensuring consistency across large numbers of collector instances. The integration with Terraform, supported via an official provider, enables declarative management of resources, promoting reproducibility and governance in CI/CD workflows. Best practices for utilizing Fleet Management with Terraform include adopting GitOps workflows, modularizing pipeline configurations, using attribute-based targeting, managing access securely, and implementing a hybrid configuration strategy to balance local control with centralized management. The system also offers prebuilt integrations for common technologies, enabling quick deployment without manual configuration, thereby reducing costs and operational risks while simplifying the management of telemetry data.

OpenTelemetry has made significant strides in 2025, focusing on stability, ease of use, and cross-project compatibility, setting the stage for further development in 2026. Grafana Labs has been heavily involved, contributing to key milestones such as the introduction of OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation and the stabilization of Semantic Conventions. The project saw over 4,000 contributors in 2025, with notable advancements including the creation of the Instrumentation Explorer and enhancements in various SDKs like .NET, JavaScript, and Rust. Grafana Labs has integrated OpenTelemetry advancements into its products, improving database and fleet management capabilities, and enhancing performance and user experience. The company has also prioritized community engagement, educating practitioners, and expanding its leadership role within the OpenTelemetry community. Looking ahead, OpenTelemetry aims to achieve CNCF Graduated Project status, focusing on further feature stabilization and making application instrumentation more accessible.

Observability in engineering has traditionally been constrained by the Iron Triangle, balancing cost, quality, and time, often resulting in costly and time-consuming incident resolutions. Grafana Labs proposes a shift in this paradigm with AI-powered investigations through their Grafana Assistant Investigations, which utilizes specialized AI agents to conduct parallel investigations across metrics, logs, traces, and profiles, dramatically reducing Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) from hours to minutes. This approach not only empowers junior engineers by reducing the cognitive load and reliance on deep expertise but also allows senior site reliability engineers (SREs) to focus on strategic tasks, effectively transforming observability from a cost center to a force multiplier. By leveraging AI to handle the computational workload, human expertise is spared for strategic decision-making, ultimately changing the economic dynamics of uptime in favor of more efficient and proactive operations.

In an effort to improve the prioritization process for feature backlogs, a software team at Grafana Labs transitioned from using the RICE method to a new scoring model called CERB, which stands for customer impact, excitement, relative size, and business impact. The RICE method, which uses metrics like reach, impact, confidence, and effort, proved challenging for the team, as it often resulted in misaligned priorities. CERB, on the other hand, simplifies the process by using a 1-5 scale for each metric, ensuring they are equally weighted, and focusing on aspects more aligned with the team's values. After implementing CERB, the team found that their roadmap priorities aligned better with the projects they completed, highlighting the importance of having a scoring model that resonates with the team's goals and culture. The CERB model is especially beneficial for teams with autonomy, a focus on incremental delivery, and a balance between business needs and innovation, and it can be adapted to fit different team values by altering its components.

GrafanaCON 2026, the largest community event for Grafana enthusiasts, will be held in Barcelona from April 20-22, featuring over 20 talks and sessions on Grafana and related open-source technologies like Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and Loki. The event invites open-source contributors and practitioners to apply to speak, with proposals accepted until January 19. Attendees can expect live demos, networking opportunities, and a new Science Fair demo for interactive projects. Grafana Labs offers coaching for speakers, encouraging ambitious and community-focused presentations. Past talks have covered diverse topics, from monitoring moon landings to tracking laundry machines, emphasizing the creative and practical use of Grafana in various fields. Participants can seek presentation advice and support through Grafana's Slack channel or by contacting the event organizers.

Optimizing query performance in Grafana dashboards is essential for maintaining fast and responsive user experiences, whether the data source is hosted in Grafana Cloud or on-premises. The Mimir Query Engine enhances efficiency, but users should still follow best practices such as optimizing PromQL queries, minimizing data fetching, and consolidating similar queries to reduce load times. High-cardinality labels and excessive use of complex filters like regular expressions should be avoided to prevent performance degradation. Additionally, efficient dashboard design involves reusing query results across panels, consolidating panels, and adjusting refresh frequencies to balance visibility with performance. Grafana Cloud offers configuration options like recording rules, incremental querying, and caching to further boost performance, providing a seamless user experience. After improving performance, refining dashboard design elements such as layout and visualization formatting can enhance the overall user experience, with Grafana Cloud offering a range of plans to suit different needs.

3CX, a versatile IP PBX platform, enhances contact center operations by offering detailed call activity and performance metrics, which can be visualized using the new 3CX app plugin for Grafana. This plugin allows users to programmatically or visually explore their PBX data, providing tailored dashboards that monitor call activity, agent performance, and call quality metrics. By visualizing these metrics in Grafana, users gain a real-time understanding of their phone system's behavior, making it easier to identify bottlenecks, optimize staffing, and improve communication strategies. The 3CX plugin integrates seamlessly with various data connectors like Google BigQuery and MySQL, offering flexibility in terms of performance and storage. Users can install the plugin from the Grafana catalog and follow guides to connect their 3CX-supported databases, ensuring automatic population of dashboards with relevant data. The plugin aims to foster ongoing improvements within the Grafana and 3CX communities, enhancing contact center visibility.

Observability is evolving beyond engineering domains to become integral to entire business operations, with organizations focusing on data value over volume amid rising costs and complexity. By 2026, unified observability is set to become the norm, not through tool consolidation, but by aligning teams around shared data and workflows to enhance decision-making. The focus is shifting to value-driven data retention, with adaptive telemetry reducing unnecessary data while maintaining critical signals. Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are transitioning from passive metrics to active decision-making tools, influencing priorities and accountability. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in observability is progressing from a supportive role to an active collaborator, enhancing system insights and response times. Observability is extending to AI models themselves, emphasizing data relationships over model metrics. The responsibility for observability is expanding across all business functions, facilitated by open standards like OpenTelemetry, which is becoming the default framework. Moreover, environmental concerns are integrating into observability practices, with carbon footprint considerations becoming part of performance and cost optimization strategies.

Mimir, an open-source, time series database used by Grafana Cloud, underwent a significant architectural shift to improve efficiency and reduce costs. The new design introduces Kafka between the read and write paths, allowing for decoupling and improved resilience by employing a predictable partitioning scheme. This change reduces the total cost of ownership by 25% compared to the previous architecture, which relied heavily on replication and quorum reads/writes inspired by Cassandra. The implementation of WarpStream helps mitigate cross-availability-zone costs by utilizing object storage for data replication, trading reduced network transfer costs for a latency penalty. This architectural overhaul not only lowered costs but also fostered a culture of experimentation within the team, allowing them to test new storage solutions in parallel with existing ones. Despite the improvements, scalability remains consistent with the previous architecture, which was already highly scalable.

The guide details a creative project for using Grafana Cloud IRM alerts in a tangible way by integrating them with a toy robot using an ESP32 and a SparkFun Qwiic LED. By creating this setup, users can have a robot in the background of a virtual meeting that lights up to indicate alerts, allowing for a more visual and less disruptive alert system. The project requires setting up an API key in Grafana, configuring a Python script to run on a Linux system, and using an MQTT broker to communicate alerts to the ESP32 in the robot. The guide provides detailed instructions on hardware setup, code configuration, and troubleshooting tips, encouraging users to experiment with various alert indicators to make incident responses both efficient and engaging.