A2A Protocol Explained: How Agent2Agent Works (and Where It Fits with MCP) (2026)

A2A (Agent2Agent) is an open protocol introduced by Google in 2025 and governed by the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation that standardizes how autonomous AI agents discover one another, exchange structured messages, delegate tasks, and manage long-running workflows across frameworks and vendors. It uses Agent Cards to publish capabilities, endpoints, and authentication requirements, supports task lifecycle states and multimodal data exchange, and provides bindings including JSON-RPC, HTTP+JSON, and gRPC. A2A complements the Model Context Protocol (MCP): A2A coordinates agent-to-agent work, while MCP connects agents to tools, APIs, and data sources. Enterprise deployment requires governance beyond the protocol itself, including individual non-human agent identities, scoped permissions, secure authentication, encrypted transport, input validation, audit trails, monitoring, and controls over memory and tool access. The protocol can support applications such as cross-department automation, vendor-integrated agent ecosystems, software development workflows, and IT incident response, while platforms such as Microsoft Foundry, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, and Google Vertex AI offer varying levels of A2A support.

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