Apple will host its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, California, headquarters from Monday, June 5 through Friday, June 9, the company announced on Wednesday.

The conference will kick off with "a special all-day event," inclusive of the customary keynote presentation and the platform State of the Union talks. The language on Apple's website suggests that like last year, some or all of those will be presented in prerecorded video form rather than as a live on-stage presentation.

After that first day, Apple will likely host various panels on how developers can work with the company's developer toolkits and APIs to support new and old features across the various Apple platforms.

Members of Apple's developer program who want to attend essentially sign up for a lottery to see if they are chosen, as the event cannot host enough people in person to meet demand. That said, the entire conference will also be available online to developers. In either case, the conference is free.

The main purpose of the WWDC keynote each year is usually to announce and explain new features coming to the next versions of Apple's various platform operating systems—in this case, iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS 14.

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That's almost sure to be the case this year as well. Sometimes Apple announces new hardware or consumer services at WWDC, too—but not always.

There have been many reports from reliable sources over the past few months that Apple hopes to provide a first look at its long-delayed mixed-reality headset and related software at this WWDC. If so, we expect that to be a big part of the keynote.

Even if that's the case, the headset probably won't be released this June. It's much more likely that Apple will outline what to expect from a release further down the road (possibly in September alongside the new flagship iPhones, but maybe even later) so that developers can begin work creating applications, games, and experiences for the new platform.

WWDC also coincides with Apple's Swift Student Challenge, a coding competition for students. The deadline to apply for that challenge is April 19.

Ars Technica will cover the announcements as they come in on the day of the keynote.