Cisco Live EMEA 2026: Developer Sessions You Can't Miss

Cisco Live EMEA 2026 runs February 9-13 in Amsterdam, and this year's developer track is heavy on AI-driven automation. For engineers building integrations across Cisco's ecosystem, the sessions focused on Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and Meraki's OAuth 2.0 transition represent the most consequential technical shifts.

Registration closes February 6 at midnight CET, with no onsite registration available. The event will livestream for remote attendees without requiring registration.

MCP Servers: The Unifying Thread

Multiple sessions across the week center on Model Context Protocol, Cisco's framework for connecting AI assistants to network infrastructure. MCP allows an AI client to dynamically discover available tools across multiple platforms—Catalyst Center, Meraki, ISE, ThousandEyes, and others—then execute operations based on natural language queries.

The architecture follows a straightforward pattern: an AI client connects to multiple MCP servers, each server exposes available tools, users submit queries in plain language, and the client selects and executes appropriate tools. A single query can span clusters and organizations, eliminating the manual multi-platform gymnastics that network engineers know too well.

Two sessions dive deep into implementation:

Network Automation Simplified: Building MCP Servers (Tuesday, February 10) walks through creating MCP servers from scratch. Cisco's network MCP Docker suite provides a starting point, packaging seven servers for Meraki, Catalyst Center, IOS XE, ISE, ThousandEyes, Splunk, and NetBox integration.

Agentic AI Your Way: Build Network Automation MCP Servers (Thursday, February 12) takes a more advanced angle, covering how to build agents that chain multiple MCP tools together for complex workflows. This connects to Cisco's broader work on context engineering for AI operations, which addresses the token explosion and reasoning limitations that occur when LLMs process raw network telemetry.

Meraki's OAuth 2.0 Push

Meraki's transition from static API keys to OAuth 2.0 gets significant airtime. Three sessions address the shift:

• Creating Your First OAuth 2.0 App with Meraki APIs (Monday, February 9, 11:30 AM-12:15 PM CET)
• Fortifying Meraki API Access with OAuth 2.0 (Wednesday, February 11)
• Day 0 to Day N with Meraki Dashboard (Tuesday, February 10)

The security case for OAuth 2.0 is straightforward. Static API keys don't expire and grant broad access, creating long-lived credentials that accumulate risk over time. OAuth 2.0 access tokens expire after 60 minutes, refresh tokens revoke after 90 days of inactivity, and scopes can be narrowly defined for specific operations.

For developers maintaining Meraki integrations, the migration path matters. Cisco's OAuth documentation provides sample Python implementations, but the sessions will cover edge cases—nonce parameter handling, client credentials workflows, and integration with existing automation pipelines.

AI Client Insights: Where Catalyst and Meraki Meet

Wednesday's AI Client Insights: Unifying Cisco Catalyst Center and Meraki with Agentic AI session addresses a pain point that hybrid network operators know well. Organizations running both Catalyst and Meraki infrastructure often maintain parallel troubleshooting workflows, separate dashboards, and disconnected telemetry.

The session demonstrates using agentic AI to correlate client connectivity issues across both platforms. A natural language query like "why is conference room B having connectivity problems" could trigger investigation across Catalyst Center wireless data and Meraki switch telemetry, returning a unified answer.

This follows Cisco's pattern of using AI to bridge organizational silos. We covered similar approaches in Cisco's STEM education initiatives, where the company is pushing certification paths that span multiple technology domains rather than siloed specializations.

Splunk Integration for Security Visibility

Two sessions pair Splunk with Meraki for enhanced network visibility:

• Splunk + Meraki Integration for Enhanced Network Visibility and Security (Tuesday, February 10)
• Unified Network Assurance and AI-Driven NetOps with Splunk (Thursday, February 12)

For security teams, the Splunk angle is particularly relevant. Meraki's event logs, security appliance data, and wireless telemetry flowing into Splunk's correlation engine opens use cases around threat detection, anomaly identification, and compliance reporting. The sessions promise to cover both the integration mechanics and operational patterns for using the combined data effectively.

Webex Developer Sessions

The Webex developer track runs parallel to the networking sessions:

• Exploring the Latest Webex Programmability Advancements (Monday, February 9, 2:30-3:15 PM CET) - New APIs, SDKs, and extensibility features
• Integrating AI or LLM into Webex AI Agent Studio (Wednesday, February 11, 8:00-8:45 AM CET) - Deploying conversational agents
• OAuth Flows for Webex Integrations (Thursday, February 12, 4:00-4:45 PM CET) - Authentication patterns for Webex apps

The Webex AI Agent Studio session is worth flagging for anyone exploring LLM integration in enterprise communication platforms. The ability to deploy custom LLMs into Webex Contact Center flows represents a significant expansion of what's possible with the platform.

Certification Changes Coincide

The event timing aligns with Cisco's February 3 certification rebranding, which renamed DevNet certifications to Cisco Automation certifications under the CCNA/CCNP/CCIE taxonomy. The updated exams place greater emphasis on automation and AI-ready networking skills.

For attendees considering certification, several sessions provide practical preparation:

• Cisco Catalyst Center Network Operations Essentials (Wednesday, February 11)
• Connecting AI to Your Infrastructure (Tuesday, February 10)
• GenAI Your Way: Reimagine Network Troubleshooting (Thursday, February 12)

Partner Ecosystem

The DevNet Zone will host over a dozen partners demonstrating integrations, including IP Fabric, BlueCat, AlgoSec, and ManageEngine. These vendors are building on top of Cisco's programmability layers, and their presence reflects the ecosystem value of standardized APIs and protocols like MCP.

What This Means for Security Professionals

The MCP and OAuth 2.0 sessions carry direct security implications. MCP servers expose network operations to AI agents—understanding how to implement proper tool restrictions and audit logging is essential before deploying these capabilities in production. The sessions covering imperative versus declarative tools address exactly this concern, distinguishing between read-heavy operations suitable for auto-generation and write operations requiring strict safety guardrails.

OAuth 2.0 migration eliminates a category of credential exposure risk, but only if implemented correctly. The sessions on nonce handling and scope definition address the implementation details where security often fails.

For teams exploring AI-driven security operations, Cisco Live EMEA 2026 provides a concentrated view of where the industry is heading. The question isn't whether AI agents will manage network infrastructure—it's how to do so without creating new attack surfaces in the process.