The opening keynote of WWDC has been presented by Tim Cook every year since 2012, but as his time as CEO draws to an end, there is speculation over whether he'll make one last appearance.
Tim Cook does appear, unsurprisingly, to have already handed over the reins to the incoming CEO John Ternus for Apple's future planning. But Cook remains CEO until September, so the first time we'll see Ternus hosting an event will be the iPhone launch later that month.
Speculation by Bloomberg backs up the idea that Cook will have one last hurrah. However, it argues that Cook will quickly hand over to Apple's Craig Federighi for the majority of the keynote video. This is fairly typical of WWDC, though.
Federighi is always prominent at the annual software developer conference, as he's Apple's Senior Vie President of Software Engineering. But he is now also effectively leading the company's moves in AI, and this year Apple Intelligence is expected to be featured prominently.
Beyond that, Bloomberg maintains that whether we do or not, we should see Mike Rockwell introducing the new Siri. He was behind the Apple Vision Pro and in April 2025 moved over to managing the AI team.
There will also be multiple people presenting various segments of the keynote video. The report says Jeff Norris should present about visionOS, and David Clark should do the watchOS portion.
Separately, if this video follows the format of previous ones, it will include at least a nod toward Apple's health features. That means Dr Sumbul Desai is likely to appear too.
Apple doesn't tend to speak about personnel changes at WWDC, but then it's been 15 years since there was one as big as a new CEO. It's conceivable, then, that Tim Cook will open the event and John Ternus will close it.
But it's more likely that, at least in terms of presenters, WWDC 2026 will follow its familiar form and be book-ended by Tim Cook.
