We’ve previously announced keynotes for a very special Language Panel with Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum and Mads Torgersen, Bjarne Stroustrup on “Profiles for simplicity and guarantees”, Laurie Kirk on “The Address is Not The Place: Object Residency in C++26”, and Timur Doumler on “How C++26 changes the way we write code.”

We’re pleased to announce our final keynote of CppCon 2026! Herb Sutter is a technical fellow at Citadel Securities, designer of several Standard C++ features, chair emeritus of the ISO C++ committee, and chair of the Standard C++ Foundation.

From Herb’s talk description:

C++: Growing in a world of efficiency, safety, and AI

C++ is adding major expressive power (e.g., reflection) and addressing weaknesses (e.g., memory safety hardening) at exactly the moment when chip supply and power budgets are raising the value of what people came to C++ for in the first place: control over memory layout (space) and deterministic performance (time). This talk is about that convergence, in two parts.

First, we cover the latest developments in ISO C++ itself, where the committee completed technical work on C++26 in March 2026, and then in June voted the first additions into the working draft for C++29:

• Key C++26 language improvements like reflection and the initial round of memory safety hardening, and standard library performance enhancers like std::simd and std::execution.
• A new Annex in the C++29 working draft cataloging every case of core language undefined behavior, the first step toward addressing it systematically rather than one paper at a time.
• Draft “profiles” for stronger portable memory safety guarantees, now being prototyped and targeted at C++29.

Second, we consider how quickly both hardware and software are moving in the industry around us. This year, capital is pouring into silicon and power at a jaw-dropping rate, and agentic systems are arriving with new capabilities and new failure modes. We’ll see how both affect C++ programming in the trenches:

• Why performance efficiency has been enduringly important, from the 1940s through to today and with no end in sight.
• How current industry data (SlashData, IDC) documents sustained growth in demand for professional programmers, especially who know languages that can operate under real space and time constraints.
• What AI does and doesn’t change about any of it: a pragmatic view both of where AI has shown real benefit in our programming world, and of what it’s not good at (yet, or ever).

Throughout, we might hear a little grumbling from the speaker about how he has always written his own talk titles and abstracts and prose using em-dashes, but now can’t use em-dashes anymore because of, well, you know.

Registration is open so don’t miss out on CppCon 2026 this September 12-18. Register today!