--- title: "Introducing this year’s new Datadog Ambassadors and the new Datadog Champions program" description: "Announcing the 2026 Datadog Ambassadors cohort and the launch of Datadog Champions, a new program for community practitioners building their technical voice." author: "David Edoh-Bedi" date: 2026-05-26 tags: ["datadog ambassadors"] blog_type_id: the-monitor locale: en --- Since we [launched the Datadog Ambassadors program](https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/ambassador-program.md) in 2023, this community of Datadog experts has continued to grow. Today we're introducing the 2026 Datadog Ambassadors cohort, along with a new program: Datadog Champions. ## The 2026 Datadog Ambassadors This year's Ambassadors cohort covers an impressive range: cloud security and SIEM specialists, SRE practitioners, platform engineers, DevOps leaders, and practitioners at the frontier of AI observability and LLM monitoring. Add to that the community builders who have organized user groups from São Paulo to Fukuoka to Lisbon, and you have the most geographically diverse and technically broad group we've had yet. ![A global map showing many pins spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.](https://web-assets.dd-static.net/42588/1779815387-ambassadors-champions-2026-1.jpeg) *Countries represented by our Datadog Ambassadors.* ### What our Ambassadors have been up to Here are some of the standout contributions from the past year: - [Ashley Parks](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-parks-devops/) spoke at [Datadog Live Dallas](https://events.datadoghq.com/events/datadog-live-dallas-2025/) about how Toyota Connected uses Datadog AI tooling. - [Ichiro Kano](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ichiro-kano-17870ba5/) organized four [user group meetups in Japan](https://jdd-ug.github.io/), drawing more than 300 attendees and more than 25 speakers across the series. - [Alvaro Abreu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvaro-abreu/) co-organized the [São Paulo Datadog User Group](https://www.meetup.com/datadog-user-group-brasil/), which has grown to more than 150 attendees per meetup. - [Marcel Drechsler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-drechsler/) organized the [Berlin Datadog User Group](https://www.meetup.com/datadog-berlin/), including a Google Cloud and Datadog SRE workshop at the Google Berlin office. - [Logan Rohloff](https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-rohloff/) sent close to a thousand messages across [Datadog's public Slack channels](https://chat.datadoghq.com/) this year, helping community members troubleshoot issues and sharing practical knowledge along the way. ### In their own words Nobody describes this community better than the people who are part of it. Here's what a few of this year's Ambassadors had to say. > [!NOTE] > “Two years ago at the Datadog London Summit I met Toli, a fellow Ambassador. Last year at DASH I connected with Marcel, another Ambassador, who invited me to speak at Datadog User Group Berlin. Both of them ended up speaking at the Dublin User Group I started last month. That event was a great success with lots of energy, more to come.” > > —Anatoly Mikhaylov, Principal Engineer, Zendesk (Ireland) > [!NOTE] > “What keeps me coming back is the chance to be part of a heterogeneous group using Datadog across different domains, and the opportunity to collaborate directly with product teams to help shape what gets built.” > > —Santiago Gómez Sáez, Principal Cloud Architect, Volkswagen Group (Germany) > [!NOTE] > “One thing that stood out to me this year was how many teams across completely different domains were struggling with the same challenge: systems looking healthy while users still felt frustration. It reinforced how observability is evolving from just monitoring infrastructure to truly understanding user experience and decision-making.” > > —Divya Gupta Arora, Engineering Manager, Expedia (India) Meet the full 2026 Datadog Ambassadors cohort at [datadoghq.com/ambassadors/](https://www.datadoghq.com/ambassadors/). ## Introducing Datadog Champions The Datadog community is larger and more active than any single program can capture. Datadog Champions is our answer to that. It's a new program to recognize practitioners who are contributing to the ecosystem, publishing content, engaging with their communities, and building their technical voice. We selected 25 of them across 11 countries to make up the inaugural 2026 cohort. ![A global map showing many pins spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.](https://web-assets.dd-static.net/42588/1779815990-ambassadors-champions-2026-2.jpeg) *Countries represented by our Datadog Champions.* ### The 2026 Champions cohort Each Champion was selected for the impact their work has on the broader community. One runs the infrastructure behind PyPI, the package repository nearly every Python project depends on. Another spent months gathering feedback on Datadog Cloud Cost Management, brought it to our Paris office in person, and watched that feedback shape the product. A third repeatedly ran Datadog experiments at Brazil's largest bank until the labs added up to a Udemy course. A fourth, based in Seoul, has spent 3 years running Datadog certification study groups as long-term learning communities. They have helped more than 300 engineers stay connected to the ecosystem after passing certification exams. Meet the full 2026 Datadog Champions cohort at [datadoghq.com/champions](https://www.datadoghq.com/champions/). ### What it means to be a Champion Being selected as a Champion means joining a private community of practitioners who are invested in observability. Champions have direct lines to the product teams building Datadog and are among the people helping to shape what gets built next. Some of the benefits include: - Content amplification and public recognition through the Datadog Champions directory and a Credly badge - A free Datadog certification exam voucher - A DASH pass ## Want to get involved? If you're contributing to the community and want to be part of either program, [we'd love to hear from you](https://chat.datadoghq.com/). And if you're heading to [DASH](https://dash.datadoghq.com/) in New York on June 9–10, come find us.