Where AI Moves from Experiment to Operation

The Drupal AI Summit NYC, taking place on May 14, 2026

Photo by Gryffindor , CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia

The conversation around AI is changing.

Not long ago, most discussions focused on what AI could do. That phase is largely behind us. Organisations are now dealing with a more difficult and more important question: how do you operate AI systems in a way that holds up over time, under real conditions, and with real consequences?

The Drupal AI Summit NYC is designed to address that shift directly. This is not a standalone Drupal event. It is co-located with apidays New York and Generation AI, placing Drupal into a broader ecosystem of technology leaders, platform owners, and organisations actively working through the realities of AI adoption at scale.

This is a different kind of conversation

This Summit is not structured as a traditional developer track, and it is not focused on early-stage experimentation. The intent is to create space for people who are already responsible for delivery and are dealing with the complexity that comes with it.

The audience includes CTOs, digital leaders, and platform owners who are navigating challenges such as governance, compliance, data ownership, and long-term operational stability. These are not theoretical concerns. They emerge quickly once AI is integrated into production systems and begin to affect real users, real data, and real outcomes.

We're In the Storm, This is the Way Through

AI is already embedded in how organisations operate, whether they realise it or not. It is present in content workflows, search systems, personalisation engines, and automation pipelines. In many cases, it has been introduced incrementally, often without a clear understanding of how data is being handled or where control ultimately resides.

This creates a gap between perceived responsibility and actual control.

The Drupal AI Initiative has been working to close that gap by focusing on approaches that are open, inspectable, and governable. This is not an abstract position. It is a practical requirement for organisations that need to understand how their systems behave, where their data is processed, and how decisions can be audited over time.

What the Summit will focus on

The programme is centred on real implementation work. The goal is to surface the decisions, trade-offs, and operational realities that teams encounter when AI moves beyond pilot projects and into production environments.

Sessions will focus on areas such as:

• AI implementations currently running in production within Drupal
• Architectural decisions and integration patterns that support long-term use
• Governance and compliance considerations in regulated environments
• Operational lessons learned from scaling AI systems
• Practical insights from projects that required course correction

The emphasis is on experience rather than theory. Attendees should expect to hear what actually happens when systems are deployed, maintained, and evolved over time.

This builds on the foundation established by the first Drupal AI Summit in Paris, which brought together global contributors to focus on practical architecture, governance, and real-world application of open source AI systems. 

Why is Drupal part of this conversation?

Drupal is not approaching AI as an external add-on. The work being done through the Drupal AI Initiative is focused on integrating AI directly into the platform in a way that preserves control, flexibility, and transparency.

That includes the ability to choose where models run, how data is processed, and how AI capabilities are embedded into content and workflow systems. It also reflects Drupal’s long-standing strengths as an open source platform built around extensibility, governance, and long-term ownership.

For organisations that need to operate AI responsibly, those characteristics are not optional. They are foundational.

Who should attend?

This Summit is intended for organisations and individuals who are already engaged in applying AI in meaningful ways and are now working through the implications of doing so at scale. In short, YOU SHOULD ATTEND.

It is particularly relevant for those who are responsible for platform decisions, architectural direction, or operational oversight, and who need to ensure that AI systems remain reliable, governable, and aligned with organisational requirements.

Join us in New York City

Early bird tickets are currently available for $150 until April 13. For an event of this scale, and with access to a much larger federated conference environment, that price is difficult to justify passing up.

The Drupal AI Summit NYC is an opportunity to engage directly with practitioners who are doing this work today, in environments where the stakes are real and the outcomes matter.

Where AI Moves from Experiment to Operation

The Drupal AI Summit NYC, taking place on May 14, 2026

Photo by Gryffindor , CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia

The conversation around AI is changing.

Not long ago, most discussions focused on what AI could do. That phase is largely behind us. Organisations are now dealing with a more difficult and more important question: how do you operate AI systems in a way that holds up over time, under real conditions, and with real consequences?

The Drupal AI Summit NYC is designed to address that shift directly. This is not a standalone Drupal event. It is co-located with apidays New York and Generation AI, placing Drupal into a broader ecosystem of technology leaders, platform owners, and organisations actively working through the realities of AI adoption at scale.

This is a different kind of conversation

This Summit is not structured as a traditional developer track, and it is not focused on early-stage experimentation. The intent is to create space for people who are already responsible for delivery and are dealing with the complexity that comes with it.

The audience includes CTOs, digital leaders, and platform owners who are navigating challenges such as governance, compliance, data ownership, and long-term operational stability. These are not theoretical concerns. They emerge quickly once AI is integrated into production systems and begin to affect real users, real data, and real outcomes.

We're In the Storm, This is the Way Through

AI is already embedded in how organisations operate, whether they realise it or not. It is present in content workflows, search systems, personalisation engines, and automation pipelines. In many cases, it has been introduced incrementally, often without a clear understanding of how data is being handled or where control ultimately resides.

This creates a gap between perceived responsibility and actual control.

The Drupal AI Initiative has been working to close that gap by focusing on approaches that are open, inspectable, and governable. This is not an abstract position. It is a practical requirement for organisations that need to understand how their systems behave, where their data is processed, and how decisions can be audited over time.

What the Summit will focus on

The programme is centred on real implementation work. The goal is to surface the decisions, trade-offs, and operational realities that teams encounter when AI moves beyond pilot projects and into production environments.

Sessions will focus on areas such as:

• AI implementations currently running in production within Drupal
• Architectural decisions and integration patterns that support long-term use
• Governance and compliance considerations in regulated environments
• Operational lessons learned from scaling AI systems
• Practical insights from projects that required course correction

The emphasis is on experience rather than theory. Attendees should expect to hear what actually happens when systems are deployed, maintained, and evolved over time.

This builds on the foundation established by the first Drupal AI Summit in Paris, which brought together global contributors to focus on practical architecture, governance, and real-world application of open source AI systems. 

Why is Drupal part of this conversation?

Drupal is not approaching AI as an external add-on. The work being done through the Drupal AI Initiative is focused on integrating AI directly into the platform in a way that preserves control, flexibility, and transparency.

That includes the ability to choose where models run, how data is processed, and how AI capabilities are embedded into content and workflow systems. It also reflects Drupal’s long-standing strengths as an open source platform built around extensibility, governance, and long-term ownership.

For organisations that need to operate AI responsibly, those characteristics are not optional. They are foundational.

Who should attend?

This Summit is intended for organisations and individuals who are already engaged in applying AI in meaningful ways and are now working through the implications of doing so at scale. In short, YOU SHOULD ATTEND.

It is particularly relevant for those who are responsible for platform decisions, architectural direction, or operational oversight, and who need to ensure that AI systems remain reliable, governable, and aligned with organisational requirements.

Join us in New York City

Early bird tickets are currently available for $150 until April 13. For an event of this scale, and with access to a much larger federated conference environment, that price is difficult to justify passing up.

The Drupal AI Summit NYC is an opportunity to engage directly with practitioners who are doing this work today, in environments where the stakes are real and the outcomes matter.

The Call for Papers for DrupalCon Rotterdam is officially open. We have an important update regarding one of our most vital tracks.
This year, we officially expanded the scope of our discussions. What was previously the Open Web track has evolved into the Digital Sovereignty and Open Web track.

Why the Change?`
Today, many large companies control our data and our platforms. The Open Web is about more than just code. It is about who has control. Digital Sovereignty means that people, organizations, and countries have the right to control their own digital lives.
By adding this to the name, we show that DrupalCon is the place for these big talks. We want to build a web that is fair, open, and not controlled by just a few large companies.

Who Should Submit?
We are looking for more than just technical sessions. To solve the challenges of the modern web, we need a broad range of perspectives. We want to hear from the following groups.

• Policymakers navigating the GDPR and the AI Act.
• Advocates fighting for digital equity and accessibility.
• Site Builders and Developers implementing privacy first architectures.
• Community Leaders fostering sustainable open source ecosystems.

Potential Topics
If you are wondering whether your idea fits, here are a few topics we would love to see on the stage.

• Accessibility as Sovereignty: Why the web is not truly open if it is not accessible to everyone. We want to hear how universal design gives people the power to use the web independently.
• Local First Apps: How to build tools that work without the internet and keep data with the user. We want to hear about tools that put the user in charge of their own information.
• Public Code: How Drupal helps everyone, from sole traders to national governments, keep their independence. We want to hear how you use open source tools to stay in control of your digital future.
• Privacy by Design: How to make Drupal sites that protect user data from the start. We want to hear how you build Drupal sites that prioritize security and privacy.
• Digital Identity: New ways for users to prove who they are without giving away their privacy. We want to hear about new identity systems that respect the individual.
• Green Coding: How saving energy helps keep the web free and open. We want to hear how digital efficiency supports a sovereign web.
• AI and Ownership: How to use AI without losing control of your work. We want to hear about how Drupal can use AI while keeping data private and models ethical.
• Regulatory and economical control: The European Union is building sovereignty through laws like GDPR, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity. We want to hear how these regulations and investments affect the way we build and host the web.

Submit Today
The Open Web does not stay open by accident. It stays open because people share their knowledge and vision. Whether you are seasoned or a first time speaker with a unique perspective, we want to hear from you.

Link to CFP  Submission Portal Deadline: https://events.drupal.org/rotterdam2026/submit-your-session-proposal

This is the biggest DXPR Builder release we have ever shipped.

In a 2023 interview with The DropTimes, I described our ultimate goal: "You will be able to put your granny in front of a computer and let her create a mobile-friendly webpage about her hobby." I talked about the day someone could just describe what they want and get a webpage instantly. Back then, I said the AI was too buggy for production. I said "I don't see this happening in 2023."

It is happening now.

With DXPR Builder 2.8, you can describe what you want and watch AI build it for you: complete pages with sections, columns, images, and cards. All styled by your theme. All ready to publish. DXPR Builder is the first Drupal page builder you can talk to, and it will create and edit complex webpages. If you have never heard of Drupal: it is the open-source CMS behind sites like Tesla.com, the European Commission, and thousands of universities. DXPR Builder is the most popular way to build pages in Drupal without writing code. Thousands of sites rely on it, from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies to solo creators. Now every one of them gets AI superpowers.

This is not a chatbot bolted onto a CMS. This is AI that understands your page and what you want it do do, knows where to place content, and lets you refine anything with plain language. DXPR AI is powered by the same models behind ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude. We integrate directly with OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, XAI, and Mistral, giving you access to the best AI models in the world from inside your page builder. If one provider is down, DXPR automatically switches to the next. No single point of failure, no vendor lock-in.

Want to skip the reading and just try it?

Jump into the free demo on try.dxpr.com

Everything AI Can Do in DXPR Builder 2.8.0

Ship Landing Pages in Minutes, Not Hours

Building a landing page used to mean hours of dragging, dropping, writing, and tweaking. Now you tell it "create a landing page for an enterprise Drupal hosting service" and watch it go. AI generates a full layout: hero, features, testimonials, pricing, call to action. It builds section by section so you can guide it, or let it finish the whole page at once. Every element is a real DXPR Builder component you can drag, edit, and restyle.

Clone Competitor Layouts Instantly

Found a competitor page you love? Type "clone https://example.com/about-us" and AI grabs the page, analyzes its structure, and rebuilds it using real DXPR Builder components styled by your theme. Not a copy-paste of their code. A proper, editable recreation you can make your own in minutes. For agencies, this changes how you pitch: walk into a prospect meeting with a working first draft built from their competitor's site.

Rewrite Any Content Without Touching the Layout

Every element on your page now has an "Edit with AI" option. Click a section and tell it "add a customer success story" or "make this sound more urgent." The AI rewrites the content in place without touching your layout. You can also select specific text inside any rich text editor and transform just that selection.

Unmatched Precision in AI-Editing

Other AI based site builders let you edit content with AI but won't let you edit with AI! With DXPR Builder, whether your content is decades old or freshly generated, AI will edit it with precision. Our highly optimized platform is calibrated for editing web content with incredible speed and precision. 

Generate and Edit Images Without Leaving the Editor

Describe the image you need and AI creates it. "A modern office team collaborating on a laptop." "An abstract illustration of connected data points." No more hunting through stock photo libraries. Already have an image that is close but not quite right? Tell AI what to change and it edits the image in place.

Generate Long-Form Content with Real Depth

Most AI tools top out at a few paragraphs. DXPR Builder 2.8 generates structured content with 1,000+ words, proper headings, and multiple sections. Whether it is a product page, a case study, a knowledge base article, or a blog post, AI researches your topic first, plans the structure, then writes.

AI Researches Your Topic Before It Writes

Mention your company, a competitor, or any topic in your prompt and AI searches the web for current information before writing. It finds facts, figures, and context so you do not have to provide them. Just prompt and go.

Set Your Brand Voice Once, Use It Everywhere

Define your writing style ("Professional and clear" or "Bold and playful") and every AI interaction follows it. Use our Tone of Voice Generator to find the right voice. Set it once in the admin settings and forget about it.

Free AI Credits: How It Works

How much do I get?

Every DXPR account gets 10,000 free AI credits per month.  1 generated word = 1 credit. 1 generaed image = 1,000 credits. Only readable words count, not code or markup. Here is what 10,000 credits looks like in practice:

• One landing page from scratch: prompt, generate, refine two sections (~3,000 credits)
• One product or campaign page: generate, edit a few sections, add images (~3,500 credits)
• Translate a page to another language (~1,500 credits)
• Generate two custom images (~2,000 credits)

That is a solid day of content production. Enough to experience everything DXPR AI can do and ship real work.

What can a team do with more credits?

Marketing teams that use AI daily typically produce 5-10x more content than before. A team with 50,000 credits per month can build new landing pages every week, produce campaign and product pages on demand, translate everything into three languages, and generate custom images for all of it. Top up AI credits anytime from your account dashboard. Credits are separate from your DXPR Builder subscription, so you only pay for what you use.

Our credits are competitively priced at just 50 cents per 1,000 credits! See our pricing page for more information.

What happens when I run out?

AI features pause until your credits reset next month. We are adding usage alerts so you always know where you stand.

How is DXPR Builder different from Drupal Canvas?

DXPR Builder has been rebuilt as an AI-first experience, greatly enhancing editor productivity while prioritizing our product-design for content marketers more than site builders, a refreshing switch from Drupal Canvas, where those roles often feel reversed in the UX. Moreover, by storing all layouts as standard Bootstrap HTML, it ensures your content investment remains portable and vendor-agnostic, empowering you to create well-documented marketing assets that thrive beyond the Drupal ecosystem.

DXPR Builder has commercial support, enterprise-grade security, hundreds of advanced elements and features, all designed for Drupal-bound content teams! 

Get Started in Five Minutes

1. Update: composer require 'drupal/dxpr_builder:^2.8'
2. Grab a free product key. No credit card needed, free forever for small sites.
3. Pick your AI provider, set your brand voice, and start prompting

Tell Us What You Think

This is the most ambitious release we have ever done. The granny with the bird photography hobby? She can build her website now. And so can your marketing team, your content editors, and anyone else who has something to say but no time to learn a page builder.

Try it, push it, break it, and tell us what you find. Drop feedback on the Drupal.org issue queue or through our support desk.

Try the Live Demo 

Drupal powers websites for governments, universities, major media organisations, and global brands - but historically it's demanded specialist knowledge just to get started. Last year's release of Drupal CMS changed that, putting Drupal's power within reach of the marketers, content teams, and site builders who actually run websites day to day.

Last week at DrupalCon Chicago, that vision took another huge step forward with the pilot launch of the Drupal Site Template Marketplace at marketplace.drupal.org.

Ready-made starting points, built the right way

The marketplace launches with an initial set of purpose-built site templates covering the use cases where Drupal has always excelled: nonprofits, higher education, healthcare, government, events, SaaS, and more, with more templates to follow as the programme grows.

Each template is a complete, working starting point. Not a design skin, but a fully configured site with real content models, editorial workflows, and Drupal's full architecture underneath. Install one inside DrupalCMS and you have a professional, sector-appropriate website that's ready to customise, not a blank slate dressed up nicely.

Free and premium options are available.

Why this is different from a WordPress theme

This distinction matters, and it's worth being direct about it.

Theme marketplaces, the kind WordPress is known for, offer visual overlays. They change how a site looks. They don't change how it works. That's fine for simple sites, but organisations that need real editorial workflows, structured content, access controls, multilingual support, or compliance requirements quickly find that a theme doesn't help. They're building the architecture from scratch regardless of how they started.

A Drupal site template includes that architecture from day one. The content models, the configuration, the editorial structure, all of it is already there, built to production standards, ready to extend.

That means the ceiling is genuinely different. Other tools can generate something that looks right. Drupal templates give you something that actually works, at scale, with a team, under real operational conditions.

Built for the sectors that need it most

Each template is designed around a specific use case, which means the features that matter for that sector are already configured and ready.

A nonprofit template arrives with the tools a nonprofit actually needs. A healthcare template is built around the trust and clarity that patients expect. A government template starts from the accessibility and security standards that aren't optional in the public sector.

Drupal's sector expertise, applied earlier in the process, so organisations can spend their time on what's specific to them, not on rebuilding foundations that have already been solved.

Expert support, built in

Every template in the marketplace connects you directly to the team that built it. If you need help customising, extending, or getting the most out of your starting point, the expertise is right there.

This is just the beginning

The marketplace is launching as a pilot, a deliberate decision to get the foundations right before scaling. The initial templates have been built to a high bar by agencies with deep Drupal expertise, and the programme will expand as more makers come on board.

It's an early but meaningful moment. The vision: a rich catalogue of sector-specific, production-ready starting points that make Drupal accessible to any organisation, is now becoming real.

Browse the current templates at marketplace.drupal.org.

Drupal powers websites for governments, universities, major media organisations, and global brands - but historically it's demanded specialist knowledge just to get started. Last year's release of Drupal CMS changed that, putting Drupal's power within reach of the marketers, content teams, and site builders who actually run websites day to day.

Last week at DrupalCon Chicago, that vision took another huge step forward with the pilot launch of the Drupal Site Template Marketplace at marketplace.drupal.org.

Ready-made starting points, built the right way

The marketplace launches with an initial set of purpose-built site templates covering the use cases where Drupal has always excelled: nonprofits, higher education, healthcare, government, events, SaaS, and more, with more templates to follow as the programme grows.

Each template is a complete, working starting point. Not a design skin, but a fully configured site with real content models, editorial workflows, and Drupal's full architecture underneath. Install one inside DrupalCMS and you have a professional, sector-appropriate website that's ready to customise, not a blank slate dressed up nicely.

Free and premium options are available.

Why this is different from a WordPress theme

This distinction matters, and it's worth being direct about it.

Theme marketplaces, the kind WordPress is known for, offer visual overlays. They change how a site looks. They don't change how it works. That's fine for simple sites, but organisations that need real editorial workflows, structured content, access controls, multilingual support, or compliance requirements quickly find that a theme doesn't help. They're building the architecture from scratch regardless of how they started.

A Drupal site template includes that architecture from day one. The content models, the configuration, the editorial structure, all of it is already there, built to production standards, ready to extend.

That means the ceiling is genuinely different. Other tools can generate something that looks right. Drupal templates give you something that actually works, at scale, with a team, under real operational conditions.

Built for the sectors that need it most

Each template is designed around a specific use case, which means the features that matter for that sector are already configured and ready.

A nonprofit template arrives with the tools a nonprofit actually needs. A healthcare template is built around the trust and clarity that patients expect. A government template starts from the accessibility and security standards that aren't optional in the public sector.

Drupal's sector expertise, applied earlier in the process, so organisations can spend their time on what's specific to them, not on rebuilding foundations that have already been solved.

Expert support, built in

Every template in the marketplace connects you directly to the team that built it. If you need help customising, extending, or getting the most out of your starting point, the expertise is right there.

This is just the beginning

The marketplace is launching as a pilot, a deliberate decision to get the foundations right before scaling. The initial templates have been built to a high bar by agencies with deep Drupal expertise, and the programme will expand as more makers come on board.

It's an early but meaningful moment. The vision: a rich catalogue of sector-specific, production-ready starting points that make Drupal accessible to any organisation, is now becoming real.

Browse the current templates at marketplace.drupal.org.

Drupal powers websites for governments, universities, major media organisations, and global brands - but historically it's demanded specialist knowledge just to get started. Last year's release of Drupal CMS changed that, putting Drupal's power within reach of the marketers, content teams, and site builders who actually run websites day to day.

Last week at DrupalCon Chicago, that vision took another huge step forward with the pilot launch of the Drupal Site Template Marketplace at marketplace.drupal.org.

Ready-made starting points, built the right way

The marketplace launches with an initial set of purpose-built site templates covering the use cases where Drupal has always excelled: nonprofits, higher education, healthcare, government, events, SaaS, and more, with more templates to follow as the programme grows.

Each template is a complete, working starting point. Not a design skin, but a fully configured site with real content models, editorial workflows, and Drupal's full architecture underneath. Install one inside DrupalCMS and you have a professional, sector-appropriate website that's ready to customise, not a blank slate dressed up nicely.

Free and premium options are available.

Why this is different from a WordPress theme

This distinction matters, and it's worth being direct about it.

Theme marketplaces, the kind WordPress is known for, offer visual overlays. They change how a site looks. They don't change how it works. That's fine for simple sites, but organisations that need real editorial workflows, structured content, access controls, multilingual support, or compliance requirements quickly find that a theme doesn't help. They're building the architecture from scratch regardless of how they started.

A Drupal site template includes that architecture from day one. The content models, the configuration, the editorial structure, all of it is already there, built to production standards, ready to extend.

That means the ceiling is genuinely different. Other tools can generate something that looks right. Drupal templates give you something that actually works, at scale, with a team, under real operational conditions.

Built for the sectors that need it most

Each template is designed around a specific use case, which means the features that matter for that sector are already configured and ready.

A nonprofit template arrives with the tools a nonprofit actually needs. A healthcare template is built around the trust and clarity that patients expect. A government template starts from the accessibility and security standards that aren't optional in the public sector.

Drupal's sector expertise, applied earlier in the process, so organisations can spend their time on what's specific to them, not on rebuilding foundations that have already been solved.

Expert support, built in

Every template in the marketplace connects you directly to the team that built it. If you need help customising, extending, or getting the most out of your starting point, the expertise is right there.

This is just the beginning

The marketplace is launching as a pilot, a deliberate decision to get the foundations right before scaling. The initial templates have been built to a high bar by agencies with deep Drupal expertise, and the programme will expand as more makers come on board.

It's an early but meaningful moment. The vision: a rich catalogue of sector-specific, production-ready starting points that make Drupal accessible to any organisation, is now becoming real.

Browse the current templates at marketplace.drupal.org.

At DrupalCon Chicago 2026, the Drupal Community Working Group was honored to announce April Sides as the recipient of the 2026 Aaron Winborn Award. Named in memory of longtime contributor Aaron Winborn, this award recognizes individuals who embody kindness, integrity, and a deep, above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal community.

About April Sides

April Sides truly embodies the spirit of the Aaron Winborn Award through the care, consistency, and intention she brings to everything she does in the Drupal community. She has been a driving force behind initiatives like A11yTalks and Drupal Camp Asheville, while also contributing to programs like MOSA and serving on the CWG Community Health Team to foster a more welcoming and supportive space for all. As a speaker, trainer, organizer, and volunteer at nearly every camp she attends, April shows up again and again for this community. Her work is grounded in accessibility, inclusion, and genuine care for people, and her impact is felt not just in what she builds but in how she supports and uplifts everyone around her.

Heartfelt Nominations

April is not just a stellar professional. They are a habitual contributor. Serving their local Drupal community and now serving on a non-profit board over Drupal events, April is an inspiration. When I think of April, I remember how they brighten the room, with humble fashion sense, making the multitudes of duties seem easy.

April Sides deserves the Aaron Winborn Award because she consistently shows up for the Drupal community with care, integrity, and a deep sense of responsibility for the people in it. April does the kind of work that often goes unnoticed, not because it isn’t important, but because it’s rooted in trust, discretion, and kindness. She makes space for people when they need it most and does so without expectation of recognition. Over the years, I’ve seen April take on some of the hardest and emotionally demanding roles in our community, including event leadership, community health work, and serving as a code of conduct contact. These roles require empathy, patience, and fairness, and April approaches them in a way that makes people feel heard and supported. When situations are complicated or uncomfortable, she listens, she helps, and she follows through. April’s commitment goes beyond maintaining community spaces. She actively works to make them better. April leads with kindness and integrity, and her quiet, consistent dedication has made the Drupal community a safer, more welcoming place for so many of us.

April is such a great person and cares so much about the community. She's an organizer of the second best DrupalCamp in the world (which is no small feat). I believe that camp would not exist without her hard work.

Award Creation

Special thank you to Annertech and CSGov in Czechia for creating and delivering the award this year.

Take a look at how the award was made.

About the Aaron Winborn Award

The award is named after a long-time Drupal contributor who lost his battle with ALS in 2015. This award recognizes an individual who, like Aaron, demonstrates personal integrity, kindness, and an above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal project and community.

Previous winners of the award are  Cathy Theys, Gabór Hojtsy, Nikki Stevens, Kevin Thull, Leslie Glynn, Baddý Breidert, AmyJune Hineline, Angie Byron, Randy Fay, Mike Anello, and Kristen Pol. Current CWG Conflict Resolution Team members, along with previous winners, selected the winner based on nominations submitted by Drupal community members.

Nominations for next year's award will open in early 2027.

At DrupalCon Chicago 2026, the Drupal Community Working Group was honored to announce April Sides as the recipient of the 2026 Aaron Winborn Award. Named in memory of longtime contributor Aaron Winborn, this award recognizes individuals who embody kindness, integrity, and a deep, above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal community.

About April Sides

April Sides truly embodies the spirit of the Aaron Winborn Award through the care, consistency, and intention she brings to everything she does in the Drupal community. She has been a driving force behind initiatives like A11yTalks and Drupal Camp Asheville, while also contributing to programs like MOSA and serving on the CWG Community Health Team to foster a more welcoming and supportive space for all. As a speaker, trainer, organizer, and volunteer at nearly every camp she attends, April shows up again and again for this community. Her work is grounded in accessibility, inclusion, and genuine care for people, and her impact is felt not just in what she builds but in how she supports and uplifts everyone around her.

Heartfelt Nominations

April is not just a stellar professional. They are a habitual contributor. Serving their local Drupal community and now serving on a non-profit board over Drupal events, April is an inspiration. When I think of April, I remember how they brighten the room, with humble fashion sense, making the multitudes of duties seem easy.

April Sides deserves the Aaron Winborn Award because she consistently shows up for the Drupal community with care, integrity, and a deep sense of responsibility for the people in it. April does the kind of work that often goes unnoticed, not because it isn’t important, but because it’s rooted in trust, discretion, and kindness. She makes space for people when they need it most and does so without expectation of recognition. Over the years, I’ve seen April take on some of the hardest and emotionally demanding roles in our community, including event leadership, community health work, and serving as a code of conduct contact. These roles require empathy, patience, and fairness, and April approaches them in a way that makes people feel heard and supported. When situations are complicated or uncomfortable, she listens, she helps, and she follows through. April’s commitment goes beyond maintaining community spaces. She actively works to make them better. April leads with kindness and integrity, and her quiet, consistent dedication has made the Drupal community a safer, more welcoming place for so many of us.

April is such a great person and cares so much about the community. She's an organizer of the second best DrupalCamp in the world (which is no small feat). I believe that camp would not exist without her hard work.

Award Creation

Special thank you to Annertech and CSGov in Czechia for creating and delivering the award this year.

Take a look at how the award was made.

About the Aaron Winborn Award

The award is named after a long-time Drupal contributor who lost his battle with ALS in 2015. This award recognizes an individual who, like Aaron, demonstrates personal integrity, kindness, and an above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal project and community.

Previous winners of the award are  Cathy Theys, Gabór Hojtsy, Nikki Stevens, Kevin Thull, Leslie Glynn, Baddý Breidert, AmyJune Hineline, Angie Byron, Randy Fay, Mike Anello, and Kristen Pol. Current CWG Conflict Resolution Team members, along with previous winners, selected the winner based on nominations submitted by Drupal community members.

Nominations for next year's award will open in early 2027.

The Drupal CMS track is back at DrupalCon Europe! Whether you are a site builder, a contributor, an agency leader, or someone just getting started with Drupal CMS, this is the place to share your story, learn from others, and help shape the future of Drupal CMS together.

From Barcelona to Rotterdam

What began as a mini-track at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 has quickly grown into one of the most popular tracks at DrupalCon Europe. In Vienna 2025, the track showcased the journey toward Drupal CMS 1.0 — and the community responded with enthusiasm, filling sessions and sparking conversations across the event.

          ^{Foto by PD Johnson}

Now, with Drupal CMS continuing to mature and gain adoption, DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 is the perfect stage to highlight real-world experiences, new features, and the road ahead.

What We Are Looking For

We are interested in hearing from the innovators who are driving Drupal CMS development as well as organisations adopting Drupal CMS on topics such as:

• ​Amplify first impressions, onboarding, and quick wins for those getting started.
• ​Refine the conversation around site building, recipes, and extending functionality.
• ​Reframe the experience of moving from other platforms or upgrading from classic Drupal.
• ​Showcase how to get involved and why your contributions make an impact.
• ​Share case studies and lessons learned from real-world projects in production.
• ​Define the vision, roadmap, and community direction for the future.

Submit Your Session Proposal

Submit your session proposal today! Visit the DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 website to submit your proposal. Whether it is a talk, a panel, or a hands-on workshop, we want to hear from you.

Meet the Track Team

The Drupal CMS track is organized by a dedicated group of community members. This year's track team includes:

• Jeremy Chinquist
• Vladimir Roudakov
• Dan Lemon

Check out all tracks and track team members here. Have questions about the track? Reach out to us on Drupal Slack or e-mail Kuoni. 

DrupalCon Europe Rotterdam 2026 is shaping up to be an incredible event. The Drupal CMS track is your opportunity to contribute to the conversation, share what you have built, and connect with the community. We look forward to seeing you in Rotterdam!

Author: Priyanka Jeph

At DrupalCon Vienna, Dries Buytaert opened his keynote with a question the room was already asking: what happens to Drupal in a world full of AI?

He answered with a live demonstration showcasing three things the initiative had built and shipped:

• Pace of delivery: pages that used to take hours now get built in minutes. 
• Brand and voice control: a new Context Control Center feature lets teams set their brand voice once, and every AI agent applies it. 
• Governance at scale: autonomous agents scan the site, find internal references, and propose updates.

The keynote highlighted an important aspect: humans stay in the loop and approve every change before anything goes live.

The Drupal AI Initiative arrives in Chicago with more to show

Since Vienna, 10 new organisations have joined as partners, bringing the total to 31. The initiative has now secured the equivalent of $1.5 million in combined support, comprising both direct funding and a committed contribution of 50 staff dedicated to advancing the work.

What is most exciting to me is not just what we’ve built, but how we’ve built it. With a growing group of contributors and more than $1.5 million in funding, this is now a coordinated effort to bring AI into Drupal in a way that is open, trusted, and built to last.

Dries Buytaert 

A portion of funds is being invested in delivery management. The initiative conducted a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process to appoint delivery partners responsible for coordinating work across both the innovation and product development streams. QED42 and 1xINTERNET were selected to lead the innovation and product development work streams respectively.

Progress is also visible in what has shipped since Vienna. Drupal AI 1.2.0 came first. MCP support followed. Drupal CMS 2.0 launched with Canvas as the default editing experience.

Drupal AI 1.3.0 introduced governance controls, editorial workflows, and production visibility for organisations running AI seriously.

Dedicated AI Marketing Leads Appointed

With the increased momentum in development it has been essential to scale marketing capacity. Paul Johnson announced the appointment of 10 marketing leads. Each will specialise on delivering specific key elements of the marketing strategy.

• Media Relations: Pritam Prasun, Open Sense Labs
• Social Media: Amber Henry, Morpht
• Webinars: Matthew Saunders, Amazee.io
• Events: Paul Johnson, 1xINTERNET
• Sales Enablement: James Tillotson, 1xINTERNET
• Case Studies: Rosie Gladden, ImageX
• Existing Capabilities: Duncan Worrell, Zoocha
• Upcoming Roadmap Capabilities: Will Huggins, Zoocha
• Demos: Dan Lemon
• Brand and Design Strategy: Dan Stratton, Zoocha

The initiative has been successful in bringing Drupal to external audiences across multiple global locations including Oaisys Conference in Pune, Drupal AI Summit Paris, DrupalCon Nara in Japan, the European Commission hackathon, and a growing number of workshops and meetups kept the work visible across contributors, regions, and practical discussions.

In the near future we have Drupal AI Summit New York City, May 14th, intended to bring the same conversation to enterprise leaders and practitioners. The team will exhibit at The AI Summit London as part of London Tech week which sees more than 45 000 attendees from around 90 countries across multiple days of programming.

In Chicago, that momentum was particularly easy to see

Drupal AI has moved beyond being merely a set of separate features. It is now realised through connected capabilities. Content, context, and editorial decisions begin to work together inside the same system.

Early in his Keynote at DrupalCon Chicago, Dries Buytaert widened the conversation. He said AI is now affecting three parts of Drupal at once. The product. The agencies around it. The open source community behind both.

That makes Chicago feel larger for Drupal AI. The releases matter. But they now sit inside a broader shift already affecting how Drupal is built, funded, and extended.

Photo: Paul Johnson

What Chicago made clear

Drupal AI is being deliberately designed as a native part of the platform, embedded within how Drupal operates rather than introduced as an additional layer on top. In doing so, AI becomes more useful as it works inside systems that already carry structure and context.

That is why Canvas AI mattered in Chicago. The demonstration was less about generating a page quickly and more about showing how content could move through Drupal while keeping structure, linking, and reusable patterns intact.

The same logic appeared when Dries returned to the Context Control Center, first introduced in Vienna. If AI is expected to assist meaningfully, organisational knowledge cannot remain outside the system. Brand rules, editorial priorities, and internal decisions need to stay close to where content is shaped. 

That is what Chicago makes clearer: Drupal AI is being positioned around context as much as capability.

What this means for agencies

One of the clearest shifts in Chicago came when the conversation moved from product to agency work.

AI is rapidly reducing the cost of production, but that does not reduce the need for judgment. It changes where the value sits.

Dries brought in Aidan Foster's observation directly: the bottleneck is no longer making things. The harder part is deciding what should be made, how it should work, and what quality still means when output becomes easier to create.

That is why agencies remain part of the same conversation. As production speeds up, strategy, interpretation, and institutional understanding begin to matter more, not less. 

In that sense, as production becomes easier, the harder part shifts elsewhere. Context, judgment, and internal knowledge begin to matter more, which is exactly where Drupal is placing more emphasis.

What do we want to accomplish by Rotterdam?

The initiative now feels materially different from where it stood even a few months ago. Prototypes are moving into alpha and beta stages, stable releases are approaching, and coordination across teams is visibly stronger. More people are involved, and the relationship between Drupal CMS, Drupal AI, and core has become easier to follow.

That shift matters because the work no longer reads as parallel experimentation. Product releases, editorial workflows, and context systems are beginning to move toward the same operating idea: AI becomes more useful when it works inside structures organisations already trust.

Photo: Jeremy Chinquist (jjchinquist)

The roadmap shown in Chicago reinforces that direction. For organisations already evaluating open source AI for digital platforms, Drupal AI now presents a clearer path to adoption.

For a complete view of how Drupal AI is framing that next stage, Dries Buytaert’s full DriesNote from Chicago is worth watching.

At DrupalCon Vienna, Dries Buytaert opened his keynote with a question the room was already asking: what happens to Drupal in a world full of AI?

He answered with a live demonstration showcasing three things the initiative had built and shipped:

• Pace of delivery: pages that used to take hours now get built in minutes. 
• Brand and voice control: a new Context Control Center feature lets teams set their brand voice once, and every AI agent applies it. 
• Governance at scale: autonomous agents scan the site, find internal references, and propose updates.

The keynote highlighted an important aspect: humans stay in the loop and approve every change before anything goes live.

The Drupal AI Initiative arrives in Chicago with more to show

Since Vienna, 10 new organisations have joined as partners, bringing the total to 31. The initiative has now secured the equivalent of $1.5 million in combined support, comprising both direct funding and a committed contribution of 50 staff dedicated to advancing the work.

What is most exciting to me is not just what we’ve built, but how we’ve built it. With a growing group of contributors and more than $1.5 million in funding, this is now a coordinated effort to bring AI into Drupal in a way that is open, trusted, and built to last.

Dries Buytaert 

A portion of funds is being invested in delivery management. The initiative conducted a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) process to appoint delivery partners responsible for coordinating work across both the innovation and product development streams. QED42 and 1xINTERNET were selected to lead the innovation and product development work streams respectively.

Progress is also visible in what has shipped since Vienna. Drupal AI 1.2.0 came first. MCP support followed. Drupal CMS 2.0 launched with Canvas as the default editing experience.

Drupal AI 1.3.0 introduced governance controls, editorial workflows, and production visibility for organisations running AI seriously.

Dedicated AI Marketing Leads Appointed

With the increased momentum in development it has been essential to scale marketing capacity. Paul Johnson announced the appointment of 10 marketing leads. Each will specialise on delivering specific key elements of the marketing strategy.

• Media Relations: Pritam Prasun, Open Sense Labs
• Social Media: Amber Henry, Morpht
• Webinars: Matthew Saunders, Amazee.io
• Events: Paul Johnson, 1xINTERNET
• Sales Enablement: James Tillotson, 1xINTERNET
• Case Studies: Rosie Gladden, ImageX
• Existing Capabilities: Duncan Worrel, Zoocha
• Upcoming Roadmap Capabilities: Will Huggins, Zoocha
• Demos: Dan Lemon
• Brand and Design Strategy: Dan Stratton, Zoocha

The initiative has been successful in bringing Drupal to external audiences across multiple global locations including Oaisys Conference in Pune, Drupal AI Summit Paris, DrupalCon Nara in Japan, the European Commission hackathon, and a growing number of workshops and meetups kept the work visible across contributors, regions, and practical discussions.

In the near future we have Drupal AI Summit New York City, May 14th, intended to bring the same conversation to enterprise leaders and practitioners. The team will exhibit at The AI Summit London as part of London Tech week which sees more than 45 000 attendees from around 90 countries across multiple days of programming.

In Chicago, that momentum was particularly easy to see

Drupal AI has moved beyond being merely a set of separate features. It is now realised through connected capabilities. Content, context, and editorial decisions begin to work together inside the same system.

Early in his Keynote at DrupalCon Chicago, Dries Buytaert widened the conversation. He said AI is now affecting three parts of Drupal at once. The product. The agencies around it. The open source community behind both.

That makes Chicago feel larger for Drupal AI. The releases matter. But they now sit inside a broader shift already affecting how Drupal is built, funded, and extended.

Photo: Paul Johnson

What Chicago made clear

Drupal AI is being deliberately designed as a native part of the platform, embedded within how Drupal operates rather than introduced as an additional layer on top. In doing so, AI becomes more useful as it works inside systems that already carry structure and context.

That is why Canvas AI mattered in Chicago. The demonstration was less about generating a page quickly and more about showing how content could move through Drupal while keeping structure, linking, and reusable patterns intact.

The same logic appeared when Dries returned to the Context Control Center, first introduced in Vienna. If AI is expected to assist meaningfully, organisational knowledge cannot remain outside the system. Brand rules, editorial priorities, and internal decisions need to stay close to where content is shaped. 

That is what Chicago makes clearer: Drupal AI is being positioned around context as much as capability.

What this means for agencies

One of the clearest shifts in Chicago came when the conversation moved from product to agency work.

AI is rapidly reducing the cost of production, but that does not reduce the need for judgment. It changes where the value sits.

Dries brought in Aidan Foster's observation directly: the bottleneck is no longer making things. The harder part is deciding what should be made, how it should work, and what quality still means when output becomes easier to create.

That is why agencies remain part of the same conversation. As production speeds up, strategy, interpretation, and institutional understanding begin to matter more, not less. 

In that sense, as production becomes easier, the harder part shifts elsewhere. Context, judgment, and internal knowledge begin to matter more, which is exactly where Drupal is placing more emphasis.

What do we want to accomplish by Rotterdam?

The initiative now feels materially different from where it stood even a few months ago. Prototypes are moving into alpha and beta stages, stable releases are approaching, and coordination across teams is visibly stronger. More people are involved, and the relationship between Drupal CMS, Drupal AI, and core has become easier to follow.

That shift matters because the work no longer reads as parallel experimentation. Product releases, editorial workflows, and context systems are beginning to move toward the same operating idea: AI becomes more useful when it works inside structures organisations already trust.

Photo: Jeremy Chinquist (jjchinquist)

The roadmap shown in Chicago reinforces that direction. For organisations already evaluating open source AI for digital platforms, Drupal AI now presents a clearer path to adoption.

For a complete view of how Drupal AI is framing that next stage, Dries Buytaert’s full DriesNote from Chicago is worth watching.

In his ‘#DriesNote’ presentation at DrupalCon Chicago 2026, Dries addressed the elephant in the room: AI is currently flooding the web with "average" content: fast to produce, but hard to distinguish. While there are tools that can generate beautiful prototypes in 15 minutes with no technical skill, those prototypes lack the structured data, governance, and durability required by serious organizations.

Drupal is bridging the gap between “AI speed” and enterprise assurance through two key innovations: the Context Control Centre (CCC) and Drupal Canvas AI, a new approach to building digital experiences.

The Context Control Centre (CCC): Institutional ‘Knowledge as a Service’

The most significant hurdle for AI today is a lack of context. Without it, AI simply gives you the "average response." The Context Control Centre changes this by allowing organizations to store their unique "DNA" directly within Drupal.

The CCC organizes institutional knowledge into actionable data:

• Brand Guidelines: Specific rules for tone, voice, and formatting.

• Personas: Detailed profiles of target audiences (e.g., Controllers vs. IT Ops).

• Dynamic Context: A groundbreaking feature where the CCC connects to live data sources like Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Built into your Drupal CMS, AI tools don't just guess; they work within your specific business reality to ensure their output is always on brand, within guidelines, and relevant to the contextual nuances of the task at hand.

Drupal Canvas AI: Where Speed Meets Substance

The second half of the equation is Drupal Canvas AI, the next-generation page builder. 

Instead of dragging and dropping components, you can just tell the AI what you want with prompts that describe the page and content you want to produce. Canvas AI, in conjunction with the CCC, will create the page and include the components you need.

As Dries noted, production is becoming a commodity, but judgment and strategy remain human. Drupal AI doesn’t replace your teams, it amplifies their capability to deliver ‘Quality at Scale.’

In his ‘#DriesNote’ presentation at DrupalCon Chicago 2026, Dries addressed the elephant in the room: AI is currently flooding the web with "average" content: fast to produce, but hard to distinguish. While there are tools that can generate beautiful prototypes in 15 minutes with no technical skill, those prototypes lack the structured data, governance, and durability required by serious organizations.

Drupal is bridging the gap between “AI speed” and enterprise assurance through two key innovations: the Context Control Centre (CCC) and Drupal Canvas AI, a new approach to building digital experiences.

The Context Control Centre (CCC): Institutional ‘Knowledge as a Service’

The most significant hurdle for AI today is a lack of context. Without it, AI simply gives you the "average response." The Context Control Centre changes this by allowing organizations to store their unique "DNA" directly within Drupal.

The CCC organizes institutional knowledge into actionable data:

• Brand Guidelines: Specific rules for tone, voice, and formatting.

• Personas: Detailed profiles of target audiences (e.g., Controllers vs. IT Ops).

• Dynamic Context: A groundbreaking feature where the CCC connects to live data sources like Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Built into your Drupal CMS, AI tools don't just guess; they work within your specific business reality to ensure their output is always on brand, within guidelines, and relevant to the contextual nuances of the task at hand.

Drupal Canvas AI: Where Speed Meets Substance

The second half of the equation is Drupal Canvas AI, the next-generation page builder. 

Instead of dragging and dropping components, you can just tell the AI what you want with prompts that describe the page and content you want to produce. Canvas AI, in conjunction with the CCC, will create the page and include the components you need.

As Dries noted, production is becoming a commodity, but judgment and strategy remain human. Drupal AI doesn’t replace your teams, it amplifies their capability to deliver ‘Quality at Scale.’

Missed the Driesnote? You can watch it here.

Drupal, the open source content management platform that runs some of the most demanding websites on the planet, turned 25 in January. But while the community is celebrating what is a remarkable milestone for any open source project, it is actively strengthening its foundations to lead in the AI era and looking ahead to a future it intends to shape.

This week at DrupalCon Chicago, Drupal's creator Dries Buytaert delivered his annual keynote, the DriesNote, and it was one of the more honest talks you'll hear at a tech conference. A clear-eyed look at what's working, what's under pressure, and what the plan actually is.

AI is Disrupting Everything, But Deep Expertise is Irreplaceable

For more than two decades, the Drupal ecosystem has rested on three things: the platform itself, the agencies that build with it, and the community that maintains it. That triangle has survived waves of new technology and constant change. It's been remarkably resilient.

But what happens when AI disrupts all three sides at once? When anyone can spin up a decent-looking site in fifteen minutes, what does that do to the people who've spent years building something better? That’s what is happening at the moment, as the world is being flooded with AI-generated “average”. Average content, average code, average websites - average is easier to attain than ever.

What it means is that the only thing that will actually matter, to customers, to organisations, to the people trying to build something lasting on the open web, is genuine, hard-won, deep expertise.

What AI Actually Can't Do

Here's something worth understanding, because it gets lost in the noise.

AI can generate a beautiful website in about fifteen minutes. Tools like Lovable and Replit are genuinely impressive. You give them a prompt, they give you something that looks polished and professional. It feels like magic.

But a prototype is not a production system.

The moment you need structured content that editors can actually update, workflows that a real team can follow, permissions, governance, security, accessibility, multilingual support, compliance... you're not building a website anymore. You're building a system. And building systems is exactly what Drupal has excelled at for 25 years.

The demo at DrupalCon made this tangible. A beautiful event site built in Lovable in minutes, then migrated into Drupal CMS using AI coding tools, where the hard-coded layout became structured, reusable, editable content. Same visual ambition. Completely different foundation.

The pitch is simple: AI gets you to visual ambition fast. Drupal makes that ambition durable.

What's Actually Shipping

This isn't a vision talk. Things are being built and released.

DrupalCMS 2.1 landed at DrupalCon, built on top of Drupal Core 11.3. Over the last 18 months, core database and cache utilization have roughly halved, meaning every Drupal site in the world gets faster when it upgrades. That's not a minor thing. That's the compounding benefit of a serious engineering community.

Site templates and a marketplace are now live at marketplace.drupal.org, with more than ten purpose-built templates covering nonprofits, education, healthcare, events, government, and SaaS, built by agencies that understand those sectors. Free and premium options, with direct access to the people who made them if you need help.

Canvas, Drupal's new page-building layer, lets teams create and customise pages at speed without sacrificing the structured content underneath.

The Context Control Centre is a system for storing and managing your organisation's institutional knowledge (brand guidelines, content strategy, audience personas, live analytics) and it's moving from prototype to production. The idea is that AI tools are only as good as the context they're given. Without it, you get the average of the internet. With it, you get something that actually knows your brand.

And in the AI layer itself, a demo showed what it looks like when a marketer can drop a raw content brief into Drupal, have the system read it, load the right brand and strategy context, ask clarifying questions, and generate a production-ready page, with proper cross-linking, structured data for AI search engines, and an accessibility check built in.

That's not a concept. That's a demo running on real code.

One Developer, Six Weeks, 90,000 Lines of Code

The most striking moment of the keynote was a contribution from Jurgen Haas, one of the Drupal community's most experienced developers. He builds ECA, Drupal's automation engine, running on thousands of production sites.

Three years ago, he knew what ECA needed. He knew how to build it. He never had the time.

Six weeks ago, he started. With AI as a collaborator, handling scaffolding, generating tests, refactoring code, he shipped a completely rebuilt workflow editor: a new visual interface, built-in debugging and replay, in-context automation for non-technical users. 90,000 lines of code. Full test coverage. One person.

"This is what one Drupal developer can build in six weeks," he said. "Imagine what all of us can build next."

The key detail: Jurgen could explain every line. He could defend the architecture. He owned what he built. AI removed friction. It didn't replace expertise.

The Harder Conversation

Not everything in the keynote was product news.

Dries was honest about the pressure on Drupal agencies. When AI commoditises production, and it is, the business models that agencies have built over years start to look shaky. An agency leader named Aidan Foster, seventeen years into running a Drupal shop, described the feeling plainly: "AI had converted making things into a commodity. That shook the foundations I had spent 17 years building."

But Aidan's conclusion was interesting. The bottleneck isn't production anymore. It's creativity, strategy, and judgement. If you use AI without asking the hard questions, who are we, who are our audience, what makes us different, you get the boring average. The agencies that will win are the ones that get good at encoding expertise, not just delivering outputs.

There's also a challenge for the community itself. AI lowers the barrier to contribute code, which sounds good, until you realise the burden of reviewing that code falls on the same small group of maintainers. And when people use AI to skip the deep learning that used to come from contributing, the community gets shallower. A shallow community can't maintain what's been built.

Dries' response was a new mantra:never submit code you don't understand. It doesn't matter what tools you used to write it. If you submit it, you own it.

The Bet Worth Making

Twenty years ago, Dries was a bedroom inventor who collapsed from stress on a street in Belgium. He had a choice: take a safe job, walk away from the thing he'd built, or ask for help and become a deliberate leader.

He made the harder choice. The community that grew up around that choice is why Drupal is still here, still relevant, still running critical infrastructure for organisations around the world.

Now there's another crossroads. AI is both the flood and the drainage system. It destabilises the foundations and it can help rebuild them stronger.

Twenty-five years of Drupal is twenty-five years of expertise built patch by patch, merge request by merge request. A community that showed up not because it had to, but because it cared. That's not a liability in the age of AI. That's exactly what this moment needs.

DrupalCon Chicago runs through this week. The marketplace is live at marketplace.drupal.org. The Context Control Centre is approaching production. The Drupal AI initiative is moving fast.

Missed the Driesnote? You can watch it here.

Drupal, the open source content management platform that runs some of the most demanding websites on the planet, turned 25 in January. But while the community is celebrating what is a remarkable milestone for any open source project, it is actively strengthening its foundations to lead in the AI era and looking ahead to a future it intends to shape.

This week at DrupalCon Chicago, Drupal's creator Dries Buytaert delivered his annual keynote, the DriesNote, and it was one of the more honest talks you'll hear at a tech conference. A clear-eyed look at what's working, what's under pressure, and what the plan actually is.

AI is Disrupting Everything, But Deep Expertise is Irreplaceable

For more than two decades, the Drupal ecosystem has rested on three things: the platform itself, the agencies that build with it, and the community that maintains it. That triangle has survived waves of new technology and constant change. It's been remarkably resilient.

But what happens when AI disrupts all three sides at once? When anyone can spin up a decent-looking site in fifteen minutes, what does that do to the people who've spent years building something better? That’s what is happening at the moment, as the world is being flooded with AI-generated “average”. Average content, average code, average websites - average is easier to attain than ever.

What it means is that the only thing that will actually matter, to customers, to organisations, to the people trying to build something lasting on the open web, is genuine, hard-won, deep expertise.

What AI Actually Can't Do

Here's something worth understanding, because it gets lost in the noise.

AI can generate a beautiful website in about fifteen minutes. Tools like Lovable and Replit are genuinely impressive. You give them a prompt, they give you something that looks polished and professional. It feels like magic.

But a prototype is not a production system.

The moment you need structured content that editors can actually update, workflows that a real team can follow, permissions, governance, security, accessibility, multilingual support, compliance... you're not building a website anymore. You're building a system. And building systems is exactly what Drupal has excelled at for 25 years.

The demo at DrupalCon made this tangible. A beautiful event site built in Lovable in minutes, then migrated into Drupal CMS using AI coding tools, where the hard-coded layout became structured, reusable, editable content. Same visual ambition. Completely different foundation.

The pitch is simple: AI gets you to visual ambition fast. Drupal makes that ambition durable.

What's Actually Shipping

This isn't a vision talk. Things are being built and released.

DrupalCMS 2.1 landed at DrupalCon, built on top of Drupal Core 11.3. Over the last 18 months, core database and cache utilization have roughly halved, meaning every Drupal site in the world gets faster when it upgrades. That's not a minor thing. That's the compounding benefit of a serious engineering community.

Site templates and a marketplace are now live at marketplace.drupal.org, with more than ten purpose-built templates covering nonprofits, education, healthcare, events, government, and SaaS, built by agencies that understand those sectors. Free and premium options, with direct access to the people who made them if you need help.

Canvas, Drupal's new page-building layer, lets teams create and customise pages at speed without sacrificing the structured content underneath.

The Context Control Centre is a system for storing and managing your organisation's institutional knowledge (brand guidelines, content strategy, audience personas, live analytics) and it's moving from prototype to production. The idea is that AI tools are only as good as the context they're given. Without it, you get the average of the internet. With it, you get something that actually knows your brand.

And in the AI layer itself, a demo showed what it looks like when a marketer can drop a raw content brief into Drupal, have the system read it, load the right brand and strategy context, ask clarifying questions, and generate a production-ready page, with proper cross-linking, structured data for AI search engines, and an accessibility check built in.

That's not a concept. That's a demo running on real code.

One Developer, Six Weeks, 90,000 Lines of Code

The most striking moment of the keynote was a contribution from Jurgen Haas, one of the Drupal community's most experienced developers. He builds ECA, Drupal's automation engine, running on thousands of production sites.

Three years ago, he knew what ECA needed. He knew how to build it. He never had the time.

Six weeks ago, he started. With AI as a collaborator, handling scaffolding, generating tests, refactoring code, he shipped a completely rebuilt workflow editor: a new visual interface, built-in debugging and replay, in-context automation for non-technical users. 90,000 lines of code. Full test coverage. One person.

"This is what one Drupal developer can build in six weeks," he said. "Imagine what all of us can build next."

The key detail: Jurgen could explain every line. He could defend the architecture. He owned what he built. AI removed friction. It didn't replace expertise.

The Harder Conversation

Not everything in the keynote was product news.

Dries was honest about the pressure on Drupal agencies. When AI commoditises production, and it is, the business models that agencies have built over years start to look shaky. An agency leader named Aidan Foster, seventeen years into running a Drupal shop, described the feeling plainly: "AI had converted making things into a commodity. That shook the foundations I had spent 17 years building."

But Aidan's conclusion was interesting. The bottleneck isn't production anymore. It's creativity, strategy, and judgement. If you use AI without asking the hard questions, who are we, who are our audience, what makes us different, you get the boring average. The agencies that will win are the ones that get good at encoding expertise, not just delivering outputs.

There's also a challenge for the community itself. AI lowers the barrier to contribute code, which sounds good, until you realise the burden of reviewing that code falls on the same small group of maintainers. And when people use AI to skip the deep learning that used to come from contributing, the community gets shallower. A shallow community can't maintain what's been built.

Dries' response was a new mantra:never submit code you don't understand. It doesn't matter what tools you used to write it. If you submit it, you own it.

The Bet Worth Making

Twenty years ago, Dries was a bedroom inventor who collapsed from stress on a street in Belgium. He had a choice: take a safe job, walk away from the thing he'd built, or ask for help and become a deliberate leader.

He made the harder choice. The community that grew up around that choice is why Drupal is still here, still relevant, still running critical infrastructure for organisations around the world.

Now there's another crossroads. AI is both the flood and the drainage system. It destabilises the foundations and it can help rebuild them stronger.

Twenty-five years of Drupal is twenty-five years of expertise built patch by patch, merge request by merge request. A community that showed up not because it had to, but because it cared. That's not a liability in the age of AI. That's exactly what this moment needs.

DrupalCon Chicago runs through this week. The marketplace is live at marketplace.drupal.org. The Context Control Centre is approaching production. The Drupal AI initiative is moving fast.

Recap of Drupal 12 release windows

Our release schedule includes three potential release dates for Drupal 12.0.0, depending on when critical requirements are completed:

1. Week of June 15, 2026, if beta requirements are completed by March 27
2. Week of August 10, 2026, if beta requirements are completed by May 15
3. Week of December 07, 2026, if beta requirements are completed by September 11

Our new target release date for Drupal 12.0.0 is the week of August 10, 2026

Many great improvements landed recently. The main branch is on Symfony 8 and most deprecated modules are removed already. With only a few days remaining until the March deadline of the first release option though, we are confident that not all critical requirements will be completed by March 27. Therefore, we are officially announcing that our new target release date for Drupal 12.0.0 is August 10, 2026, and the beta deadline for critical requirements is May 15, 2026.

We need your help to complete requirements by May 15!

While there are other pending improvements that are not hard requirements for Drupal 12's release, these are the most urgent needs:

1. PHPUnit 12 support

   While our ultimate goal is to support PHPUnit 13 in Drupal 12, there are significant API changes in PHPUnit 12 that we first need to adopt. See #3527936: Introduce support for PHPUnit 12

2. Import maps API

   CKEditor 5 is changing their installation method in the near future. See #3527914: [PP-1] Use New installation methods for CKEditor5

   To support this, we need a JavaScript import maps API in core. See #3398525: Add an API for importmaps

3. Update path related changes

   To test update paths from Drupal 11.3.0, we need to generate new database dumps. See #3569127: Add new 11.3.x database dump fixtures, without modules deprecated for removal in 12.x

   Remove older upgrade paths. See #3580877: [PP-1] Remove updates added prior to 11.3.0 from 12.x

4. Remove tests from release packages

   To reduce the size of core, we are excluding tests from core release packages, and offering them via a different namespace. This is a disruptive change and should only be done in a major release.
   See #3067979: Exclude test files from release packages.

5. Deprecate and remove libraries, modules, themes and dependencies

   The Toolbar Module needs to be removed from core now that the Navigation module is stable and in the standard profile. See #3484850: [PP-1] [meta] Deprecate Toolbar module

   There are more dependencies, modules and themes that are still possible to remove. See #3466088: [meta] Deprecate dependencies, libraries, modules, and themes that will be removed from Drupal 12 core

6. Move from Claro to Gin as admin theme

   Gin is in core as an alpha experimental extension. Help make it stable and so it can replace Claro.
   See #3576488: [meta] Admin theme: path to stable.

7. Update to ESLint 9

   The coding standard checks are using the unsupported ESLint 8. We need to update to version 9. See #3440225: Update to ESLint v9 with standard rules.
   See #3440225: Update to ESLint v9 with standard rules.

The above list are the current highest priorities. We'll keep identifying and tagging Drupal 12 release priority issues. The up to date list can be found using the Drupal 12.0.0 release priority tag.

Join us THURSDAY, March 19 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits. Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google document at https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.

This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone.

Information on joining the meeting can be found in our collaborative Google document.