Google and Kaggle Are Bringing Back Their Free AI Agents Course — Here’s What’s New

Last November, Google and Kaggle launched a free five-day AI Agents Intensive Course that somehow managed to attract over 1.5 million learners. That’s a lot of people willing to spend a week learning about agents, which tells you something about the hunger for practical AI education right now.

They’re bringing it back. The second edition runs June 15-19, 2026, and registration opened today. The course is still free, which is the main draw, but there are actual updates this time around.

What’s changed

The original course was solid but felt like a broad survey. This version has updated content, new speakers, and a hands-on capstone project that wasn’t there before. The capstone is where you actually build something end-to-end, which is where most online courses fall short. If they pull this off, it’ll be worth the week.

The focus this year is on “vibe coding” — which is just a fancy way of saying you build agents using natural language as the primary interface. No, it’s not magic. You still need to understand what you’re doing, but the idea is that you describe what you want and the system handles more of the implementation details. I’ve seen this approach tried before, and it works well for prototyping but gets messy at scale. Still, for a five-day course, it’s a reasonable starting point.

What you’ll actually learn

Each day covers a mix of theory and practice. The progression goes from foundational concepts to production-ready systems, which is ambitious for five days but doable if the pacing is right. They’re also emphasizing how to connect tools and APIs to create “10x agents” — their words, not mine. I’d take that claim with a grain of salt, but the underlying skill of integrating external services is genuinely useful.

By the end, you’re supposed to be comfortable designing, building, and deploying agent systems. The capstone project is where you prove it. No word on what the project entails yet, but given Kaggle’s involvement, expect something data-heavy.

Should you sign up?

If you’re already building agents in production, this course is probably too basic. But if you’re curious about agents and want a structured introduction from people who actually work on this stuff at Google, it’s hard to beat free. The original course had good production value and the speakers knew their material. I expect the same here.

One thing to note: 1.5 million registrants last time means demand is high. Registration is open now on the course website, and spots might fill up. If you’re interested, don’t wait until June to sign up.

I’ll be curious to see how the vibe coding angle plays out. It’s a trendy term right now, but the underlying concept — natural language as a programming tool — has real legs. Whether a five-day course can teach it effectively remains to be seen. But for free, it’s worth finding out.