We have to admit one thing — we’re pretty happy Atlassian decided last year to launch a European edition of its biggest conference, Team. Because when summer is long gone and, in mid-October, you get a solid reason to head somewhere still sunny like Barcelona — you really can’t complain about being part of the biggest Atlassian team in Croatia.
Jokes aside, it wasn’t hard for us again this year to trek all the way to Barcelona to learn what’s new — not just from Atlassian, but also from the biggest vendors like Adaptavist, whose add-ons we all use every day.
So let’s go in order — what did we hear that was interesting, what was announced, what could be a game changer… Everything in one place!
Keynote talks: Cloud and AI take the helm
If the last two years haven’t convinced you yet, it’s time to get used to it: AI is — and will be for a while — the focus of major conferences. And that’s no surprise — it’s a revolutionary technology that is shaping (and already shaping) how we work and collaborate every day. It’s here to stay. It’s not a passing phase!
Accordingly, the first keynote at Team ’25 was about AI, delivered by former Google Chief Business Officer Mo Gawdat, who spoke about the importance and role of artificial intelligence in team collaboration. A great intro to what followed: a bit of AI from Atlassian in the form of Rovo and its new features — but let’s talk products and features a little further down!
The other major theme running through the conference — alongside AI — was cloud. To sum up the founders’ keynote from Mike Cannon-Brookes, Anu Bharadwaj and Brian Duffy: the future of team collaboration will happen in the cloud, powered by AI, inside what Atlassian calls the System of Work.
That, in turn, is meant to be a unified ecosystem where planning, documentation and execution flow seamlessly across Jira, Confluence and the rest of Atlassian’s platforms — with the goal of eliminating information sprawl, reducing loss of context across information and documents, and enabling team members to focus on progress rather than process.
At least, that’s how they envision it!
What’s new from Atlassian and the vendors?
The part everyone looks forward to most at Team — actually didn’t deliver a whole lot. At least not from Atlassian itself. Reading between the lines, they’re placing huge bets on Rovo. It seems the aggressive push for their new AI helper is working so far, because, as they claim, Rovo now has more than 3 million monthly active users!
So what does Rovo 2.0 bring?
First and foremost — Rovo Studio. The most interesting novelty is that anyone can now “assemble” their own AI agent in plain language, without a single line of code. Out of the box there are 100+ ready-made skills, so an agent can write emails for you, search data or flesh out project plans.
The second new feature is Rovo Canvas: an interactive workspace right inside Rovo Chat where the team sketches ideas in real time, structures content, and immediately pulls out actionable tasks — without hopping between tools and without losing context.
And finally, Rovo steps outside the Atlassian walled garden: a new desktop app connects to everyday tools like Excel and email systems and automatically turns information into Jira tickets or project structures. Add to that integrations with external partner solutions (for example, Canva agents) and it’s clear they’re building an open, AI-based ecosystem that could seriously speed up the way teams work.
Atlassian Units and Collections
Atlassian Units is one of the bigger announcements this year. Planned for 2026 — you’ll be able to isolate users, data, apps and AI context by business unit or subsidiary. For global or regulated organisations, that removes major blockers (compliance, data sovereignty, separated teams). But a word of caution — Units need thoughtful design; stack them without a strategy and you’ll fragment collaboration and lose the benefits of “one system of work.”
Atlassian also remembered their most loyal users — PMs — with a Collections approach to using their tooling. Atlassian is pushing role-based workspaces that bundle tools, processes and AI features into one package. A PM gets a workspace with relevant views, automations and agents; a designer or analyst gets their own — all consistent and without tab-hopping. The idea is that Collections become your “start screen” for work, not just another set of links. Take a look at the image:
News from Adaptavist
And speaking of vendors — Adaptavist pleasantly surprised us. In Barcelona we caught their talk where they announced a new tool that will seriously ease the transition from Jira Data Center to Jira Cloud. The idea is simple yet powerful: with AI, the tool will automate and simplify the migration of scripts from DC to Cloud — a jackpot for organisations with heaps of scripts woven into their processes.
At their booth we learned another key detail: ScriptRunner for Cloud is getting a Script Editor in December this year for storing scripts, which is precisely the functionality Cloud users have missed the most.
The result should be a faster, cleaner and less painful migration path. This tool, together with the upcoming upgrades, could drastically shorten the time to move to cloud and reduce risk, so teams can focus on work instead of rewriting scripts.
Party, networking and Carlos Sainz
Beyond talks and product news, Team conferences are known for their entertainment. Since Atlassian became a sponsor of the Williams Formula 1 team a few years ago, this year the spotlight was on their star Carlos Sainz. Naturally, his talk was framed around how, in the “octane circus,” it’s actually team collaboration that wins — even though racing appears to be an individual discipline.
Evenings were dedicated to parties — ideal opportunities to mingle with the rest of the conference crowd, pick up a few good ideas and swap experiences. Personally, we’d highlight the “Gin with Kin” welcome party organised by Trundl — can’t wait to do it again!
Until next year!
