Cloud Native Computing Foundation FAQ

Applicants must be 18 or older, be willing to review and sign the Ambassador Standards of Excellence annually, and participate in at least two listed areas of expertise, such as contributing to a CNCF project, mentoring, organising a KCD or CNCG, speaking at events, or creating content. All requirements must be met — applicants who miss any are not considered.

Review the current requirements, agree to the Ambassador Standards of Excellence, and submit an application for consideration. If you are not yet eligible, CNCF suggests becoming active through meetups or KCDs, content creation, contributing to a CNCF project, or joining a SIG or TAG.

Organisers receive core branding, centralised tools and templates, monthly CNCF support meetings and weekly assistance via email and Slack. CNCF also offers monetary sponsorship based on need and geographic location, with financial transparency required across all KCDs.

Organisers must complete an application form as a one-time official submission to host a KCD. GitHub, the previous request mechanism, now serves only as an internal progress tracker with issues created by CNCF staff, so new event requests should not be filed there.

New membership points of contact can email support@cncf.io to schedule a welcome call, and other queries can be raised through the Member Help Desk. Membership contacts can be updated by submitting a ticket to the Member Desk or via the LFX Organization Dashboard.

Organisations must qualify as an End User and have made at least one significant contribution to the CNCF ecosystem in the last 18 months — for example contributing to a Cloud Native Reference Architecture, publishing a case study or journey report, contributing code or docs to a CNCF project, or employing a project maintainer or CNCF Ambassador. Permission for CNCF to display your logo is also required.

KTPs are vetted training providers with deep cloud native training experience who must be CNCF members, existing KCSPs, CKA/CKAD exam resellers, and meet strict quality benchmarks. KCSPs are pre-qualified service providers offering Kubernetes support, consulting and professional services, whereas KTPs focus on training mapped to the CKA/CKAD exams.

Silver Membership provides ten LF Education coupons for 50% off training courses or certification exams, discounts on CNCF and Linux Foundation certifications, eligibility to host local Kubernetes Community Days, logo placement on the CNCF website and interactive landscape, inclusion in the quarterly new member press release, two blog submissions and two on-demand online programs a year, plus KubeCon sponsorship discounts.

CNCF is the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud native computing, hosting projects including Kubernetes, Envoy and Prometheus.

CNCF is the open source, vendor-neutral hub of cloud native computing, hosting projects including Kubernetes, Envoy and Prometheus.