[1] The event has been held at a large convention center, or purpose-built meeting space on the Microsoft Campus.

There are breakout sessions conducted by engineers and program managers, most often Microsoft employees representing their particular initiatives.

Attendees received a Surface RT tablet with Touch Cover, a Nokia Lumia 920 smartphone, and 100GB of free SkyDrive storage.

[6][7] Each attendee received a Surface Pro, Acer Iconia W3 (the first 8-inch Windows 8 tablet) with a Bluetooth keyboard, one year of Adobe Creative Cloud and 100GB of free SkyDrive storage.

[9] Highlights: Build 2015 was held at the Moscone Center (West) in San Francisco from April 29 to May 1, 2015.

Registration fee is $2095, and opened at 9:00am PST on Thursday, January 22 and "sold out" in under an hour[10][11] with an unspecified number of attendees.

[17] The Seattle location brought the conference close to the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Highlights: Microsoft announced the dates for Build, and their other large conferences on September 16, 2019, with pricing set at $2395.

[18] The physical 2020 Build conference, scheduled to take place in downtown Seattle, Washington from May 19 to May 21, 2020, was initially cancelled due the coronavirus pandemic.

The company also expanded its plugin platform in collaboration with OpenAI, allowing developers to submit their AI experiences to the Microsoft Store on Windows.