Our Python + MCP series is a three-part, hands-on journey into one of the most important emerging technologies of 2025: MCP (Model Context Protocol) — an open standard for extending AI agents and chat interfaces with real-world tools, data, and execution environments. Whether you're building custom GitHub Copilot tools, powering internal developer agents, or creating AI-augmented applications, MCP provides the missing interoperability layer between LLMs and the systems they need to act on.
Across the series, we move from local prototyping, to cloud deployment, to enterprise-grade authentication and security, all powered by Python and the FastMCP SDK. Each session builds on the last, showing how MCP servers can evolve from simple localhost services to fully authenticated, production-ready services running in the cloud — and how agents built with frameworks like Langchain and Microsoft’s agent-framework can consume them at every stage.
🔗 Register for the entire series.
You can also scroll down to learn about each live stream and register for individual sessions.
In addition to the live streams, you can also join office hours after each session in Foundry Discord to ask any follow-up questions.
To get started with your MCP learnings before the series, check out the free MCP-for-beginners course on GitHub.
Building MCP servers with FastMCP
16 December, 2025 | 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time
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In the intro session of our Python + MCP series, we dive into the hottest technology of 2025: MCP (Model Context Protocol). This open protocol makes it easy to extend AI agents and chatbots with custom functionality, making them more powerful and flexible. We demonstrate how to use the Python FastMCP SDK to build an MCP server running locally and consume that server from chatbots like GitHub Copilot. Then we build our own MCP client to consume the server. Finally, we discover how easy it is to connect AI agent frameworks like Langchain and Microsoft agent-framework to MCP servers.
Deploying MCP servers to the cloud
17 December, 2025 | 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time
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In our second session of the Python + MCP series, we're deploying MCP servers to the cloud! We'll walk through the process of containerizing a FastMCP server with Docker and deploying to Azure Container Apps, and also demonstrate a FastMCP server running directly on Azure Functions. Then we'll explore private networking options for MCP servers, using virtual networks that restrict external access to internal MCP tools and agents.
Authentication for MCP servers
18 December, 2025 | 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM (UTC) Coordinated Universal Time
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In our third session of the Python + MCP series, we're exploring the best ways to build authentication layers on top of your MCP servers. That could be as simple as an API key to gate access, but for the servers that provide user-specific data, we need to use an OAuth2-based authentication flow. MCP authentication is built on top of OAuth2 but with additional requirements like PRM and DCR/CIMD, which can make it difficult to implement fully. In this session, we'll demonstrate the full MCP auth flow, and provide examples that implement MCP Auth on top of Microsoft Entra.
Microsoft