<p>CNCF and SlashData surveyed 400+ professional developers worldwide for their Q1 2026 Technology Landscape Radar report, mapping which cloud-native platform engineering tools are mature enough for broad adoption across workflow automation, application delivery, and security.</p>
<h2>What reached ‘Adopt’ status</h2>
<p>The report uses an Adopt/Trial/Assess framework based on usefulness and maturity ratings. Several tools cleared the bar:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Workflow automation:</strong> GitHub Actions leads with a 91% recommendation rate</li>
<li><strong>Application delivery:</strong> Helm dominates with 94% four-to-five star ratings and 34% adoption share; ArgoCD also reached Adopt status</li>
<li><strong>Security and compliance:</strong> cert-manager tops the category with 87% high maturity ratings; Keycloak and OPA also made Adopt</li>
<li><strong>Developer platforms:</strong> Backstage and kro both earned Adopt status</li>
</ul>
<p>Armada earned the highest overall maturity scores across all categories.</p>
<h2>AI workloads and platform strategy</h2>
<p>35% of organizations are using hybrid platform approaches to integrate AI workloads into existing developer infrastructure. The most common internal developer platform model is multi-team collaboration, used by 41% of respondents. Teams that have already built custom internal platforms are generally better positioned to extend them for AI capabilities than those relying on off-the-shelf tooling.</p>
<p>The full report is available through CNCF.</p>


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CNCF and SlashData's Q1 2026 Technology Landscape Radar surveyed 400+ developers to assess cloud-native platform engineering tools. GitHub Actions (91% recommendation), Helm (94% high ratings, 34% adoption), ArgoCD, cert-manager, Keycloak, OPA, Backstage, and kro all reached 'Adopt' status. Armada earned the highest overall maturity scores. On AI integration, 35% of organizations use hybrid platform approaches, with 41% favoring multi-team collaboration models for internal developer platforms. Teams with custom-built platforms are better positioned to extend them for AI workloads.

CNCF and SlashData's Q1 2026 cloud-native survey: which platform engineering tools are ready to adopt