Drupal's cache.backend.chainedfast makes your site faster without any configuration. All you need is to have APCu on your server. It shows up in the bootstrap, config, and discovery cache bins, and most developers never think about it or even know it is being leveraged.

The chained-fast backend combines two backends: a fast, inconsistent backend (APCu, local to each web server process) and a consistent backend (the database, which is shared across all servers). APCu alone is dangerous in a multi-server environment because each server has its own copy of the data; invalidations on one server don't propagate to others. The chained backend solves this with a last-write timestamp.

When should you move from WordPress to Drupal? Learn the signs, the process, and what it looks like in a real migration case.

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.

File attachments:  SITE TEMPLATE SOCIAL CARD.png

Just under the deadline for the March newsletter!

I spent the last week at DrupalCon Chicago, seeing lots of old friends and having lots of discussions about the impact of AI on open-source developers everywhere.

Scaling Maintainership for DDEV (and everywhere)

I'm noticing that because of AI it's getting easier for our lovely community to contribute to DDEV. But I'm also seeing that our PR queue is getting longer, and Stas and I are feeling more pressure from it, because we sure don't like to frustrate contributors. In many cases, we have been getting good quality and nontrivial contributions, and contributions that have been prioritized. But they may not be exactly the things that we were hoping to put our own energy toward. And a couple of them are difficult to review because they touch low-level areas.

And I even notice that I am tempted to create too many new PRs because it's easy. On the train back from Chicago (30 hours) I couldn't help myself and did two new diagnostic commands for DDEV (using Claude Code). It's all well and good, but that's two more PRs that I have to study carefully, manually test on multiple platforms, and that Stas has to look at and test.

We'd love to have your comments and feedback about this cycle. Here are some thoughts that came up in various conversations:

• We need to keep trying to turn contributors into maintainers. AI doesn't really do that. It helps people create things, or figure out how to scratch an itch, but it doesn't typically help with overall maintenance activities. If we can get more community members to build their skills in reviewing other PRs (both looking at code and manually testing) and giving their feedback about issues and priorities, maybe that's a good path.
• We probably need to add a little more conversation to contributions before people spend time on them. I opened an issue for discussion about changing to requiring an issue (and conversation) before PR creation. I'd love your comments.
• Guarding against burnout is critical for our project, especially for Stas and me. We want to be smart about this and properly manage all of our resources for the long term.

If you're interested in contributing more deeply and moving toward a maintainer role, the contributor training sessions are a good way to get started. And join us for conversations and community support in Discord and the issue queue.

What's New

• coder.ddev.com Launched → Free, experimental cloud-based DDEV workspaces powered by Coder. Start a Drupal contribution environment in under 30 seconds with full VS Code, Xdebug, and CLI support. Read the announcement↗. Some folks used this for contributions at the DrupalCon Chicago Contribution Day. I've been using it on the train on the way home.
• New TUI Dashboard → DDEV now includes an interactive terminal dashboard for managing projects, checking service status, and running common commands without leaving the terminal. Watch a Two-minute Screenshare. Inspired by community member Olivier Dobberkau's ddev-mngr add-on.
• git worktree Contributor Training → Our March 26 session covered using git worktree with DDEV to run multiple versions of the same project simultaneously. Watch the recording and read the post↗

DrupalCon Chicago

DrupalCon Chicago was a highlight of the month. Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions are informal, attendee-organized meetups at DrupalCon where people with a common interest gather to talk — no slides required. I led several DDEV BoFs, including Git Worktrees and DDEV, DDEV Office Hours, What's New in DDEV, New ddev share features, Xdebug in DDEV, and Using coder.ddev.com (DDEV in the Cloud).

If you attended and have thoughts (or are just interested) join us to discuss in Discord.

Florida Drupal Camp

Florida Drupalcamp in February was also a good time — see the git worktree session recording was well-received. Thanks to everyone who came out and shared their DDEV experiences.

Governance

The DDEV board and advisory group met on March 4, 2026. See all the details and recording.

The next meeting is May 6, 2026 at 8:00 AM US Mountain / 10:00 AM US Eastern / 16:00 CEST. Add to Google Calendar • Discussion and details

Community Highlights

• ddev-drupal-code-quality → UltraBob published a DDEV add-on for Drupal code quality tooling. View on GitHub↗
• ddev-joomla → René Kreijveld published a DDEV add-on for Joomla development. View on GitHub↗. He also has a PR going for explicit Joomla support in DDEV core.
• ddev-drupal-contrib → The ddev-drupal-contrib add-on continues to be a go-to for Drupal contrib module development. View on GitHub↗

Interviews and Articles About Stas

Two pieces this month featuring DDEV maintainer Stas Zhuk:

• TheDropTimes Interview → "The Work Behind the Workflow: Stas Zhuk and the Future of DDEV" — an interview covering Stas's work on DDEV and where things are headed. Read on TheDropTimes↗
• Dev.to Feature → "The Future of DDEV: Stas Zhuk Is Pushing It in the Right Direction" — a community perspective on Stas's contributions. Read on Dev.to↗

Community Tutorials from Around the Web

• Symlink Your Way to Faster Drupal Contrib Module Development → A practical technique for speeding up module development workflows with DDEV. Read on Medium↗
• DDEV, Laravel, and a Go API: The Sidecar Approach → Russell Jones explains how to get DDEV, Laravel, and a Go API service talking to each other. Read on Dev.to↗
• Deploy Laravel to Coolify Without the Pain → How to use DDEV with Coolify for Laravel deployments. Read on Medium↗
• Local Development with DDEV → A tutorial covering DDEV setup and daily use. Read more↗
• Getting Started with DDEV → Peter Benoit's overview of DDEV for local development. Read more↗

Upcoming Training

Join us for upcoming training sessions for contributors and users.

• April 23, 2026 at 10:00 US ET / 16:00 CEST — Creating, maintaining and testing add-ons 2026-updated version of our popular add-on training. Previous session recording↗ Add to Google Calendar • Download .ics

Join Zoom Meeting — Meeting ID: 731 569 2237 — Passcode: 12345

Sponsorship Update

Sponsorship is at 77% of goal — thank you to everyone who has contributed!

February 2026: ~$8,422/month (70% of goal)

March 2026: ~$9,294/month (77% of goal) - Great progress, thank you!

If DDEV has helped your team, consider sponsoring. Whether you're an individual developer, an agency, or an organization, your contribution makes a difference. → Become a sponsor↗

Contact us to discuss sponsorship options that work for your organization.

Stay in the Loop—Follow Us and Join the Conversation

• Blog↗
• LinkedIn↗
• Mastodon↗
• Bluesky↗
• Discord↗

Compiled and edited with assistance from Claude Code.

Live from DrupalCon Chicago, Nic Laflin is joined by Tim Plunkett, Steve Wirt, Martin Anderson-Clutz, and John Picozzi to discuss the event's tone, Dries Notes and key themes including Drupal Canvas, Drupal AI, and new site templates/marketplace progress and more.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/546

Topics

• Reconnecting With Community
• Must See Sessions
• Vibe And Starshot
• Attendance And Venue
• Community Party Returns
• Dries Note and AI Debate
• Roadmap And Templates
• Recipes And Exports
• AI In Engineering Workflows
• Keynote Style Takeaways
• Dries Note Takeaways
• Canvas Content Templates
• View Modes Roadmap
• Translation Plans Explained
• Gala Highlights
• Commemorative Tokens
• Future Excitement Roundtable
• DrupalCon Orlando Tease
• Wrap Up and Contacts

Guests

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Tim Plunkett - timplunkett

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan

Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt

My LocalGov Drupal contributions for March 2026

Having spent last month working on the new design for the demo theme, I decided to do something similar and focus on a project for March. This month I worked on LocalGov Services.

markconroy 31st Mar 2026

In my portion of the “Drupal CMS Spotlights” keynote, I made the case that in my 19+ years of being involved in the Drupal community, now is the most exciting time in Drupal’s history.

I showed up to DrupalCon very anxious, because we had one training, three sessions, one booth session, and an extra “appearance” beyond that. Phew! In addition, Andy, Adam G-H, and I had only just wrapped up the work on Drupal CMS that allowed for paid site templates in the installer.

Drupal innovation & getting sh** done

With all of the work being done on 1) Drupal CMS, 2) Drupal Canvas, and 3) Drupal AI, it really feels like the pace of innovation has increased significantly from just two years ago. It’s exciting, but oftentimes it's also a bit overwhelming!

Falling in the playground

Using the metaphor of a playground for my AI Drupal development environment now feels completely fitting, based on my experience building a module using AI. Good playgrounds have a variety of structures that challenge kids of different ages and confidence levels, helping them develop their physical and social skills.

For example, most kids don't just run into a playground and immediately climb to the top of the monkey bars as their first move; yes, some daredevils will go straight there, and foolish ones will cry for help if they get stuck. My specific playground experience with AI was learning how to fall, get up, and try again. My obstacle was building a module using Claude Code. Similar to kids trying their first climb on the monkey bars, they expect to reach the top effortlessly, but as they climb, they face reality, their hands get sweaty, and they look down.

Unrealistic expectations

I had glorious expectations for my experience building a fairly complex module with Claude Code. I assumed that a fully documented module specification plan would guide Claude in creating a working solution.

Personally, I am not very skilled at writing requirements, specifications, and documentation. At best, I excel at writing self-documenting code, which is somewhat of a cop-out. For me, having a complete plan in place before starting implementation feels like a refreshing change. Creating better plans for AI coding agents will help me become a better mentor to humans.

Prompting a comprehensive plan

I wrote my module specification using Claude Chat. In my previous post about experimenting with agent skills, I shared an example module...Read More

Drupal 12 will hash passwords with Argon2id by default. It moves every Drupal site to what is now best practice for password storage, recommended by OWASP and aligned with NIST guidance.

Drupal is often used for security-sensitive and large-scale sites, so these kinds of changes matter.

Early versions of Drupal stored passwords as simple MD5 hashes, which is extremely weak by today's standards. Drupal 7 introduced a modified version of the phpass library using SHA-512 with multiple iterations and a salt, and Drupal 10 switched to bcrypt. Each jump was a response to attackers getting faster hardware, and this change continues that pattern.

When I first looked at this change, I wanted to understand what Argon2id actually does differently from bcrypt.

Its key advantage is that it is "memory hard". Each Argon2id hash requires far more memory to compute than a bcrypt hash, and the amount is configurable.

Modern GPUs can run many bcrypt computations in parallel because each one uses very little RAM. GPUs have a lot of total memory, but it is shared across thousands of parallel computations. As a result, Argon2id limits how many hash computations can run in parallel, making it harder and more expensive to scale attacks.

The best security upgrades are the ones nobody has to think about. Once a site upgrades to Drupal 12, existing passwords will automatically be rehashed to Argon2id the next time each user logs in. And in the unlikely event that Argon2id is not available in a particular PHP installation, Drupal will fall back to bcrypt for compatibility.

Many site owners never think about password hashing, so Drupal's defaults become their security policy. The people who benefit most from this change may never know it happened. It's why being "secure by default" matters so much.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.

git worktree lets you check out multiple branches of the same repository into separate directories—all sharing one .git directory. Combined with DDEV, this gives you multiple running versions of the same project without duplicate clones.

There are many ways to use this, but some common patterns:

• Keep directories named after the branch they contain.
• Work on a hotfix and a feature branch without them interfering with each other.
• Set up Claude Code to work on two features at once in two distinct directories.

Here's our March 26, 2026 Contributor Training on using git worktree with DDEV:

The slides are available at rfay.github.io/git-worktree-ddev.

See also the presentation at Florida Drupal Camp.

The Problem: Multiple Versions of a Project

When you need to work on several branches of a project simultaneously—say, a feature branch and a hotfix branch—the naive approach is to clone the repository twice:

git clone git@github.com:ddev/d11simple fancy-feature-1 git clone git@github.com:ddev/d11simple fancy-feature-2

This works, but each clone is a full redundant copy, and sharing objects or refs between them is awkward.

DDEV Project Names and Directories

By default, DDEV names a project after the directory it lives in. When you remove the name: key from .ddev/config.yaml, every checkout of a project gets the name of its parent directory automatically.

You can make this the global default:

ddev config global --omit-project-name-by-default

With that in place, fancy-feature-1/ becomes https://fancy-feature-1.ddev.site and fancy-feature-2/ becomes https://fancy-feature-2.ddev.site—no manual naming is required.

Using git worktree

git worktree solves the duplicate-clone problem. All worktrees share one .git directory:

# In ~/workspace/D11SIMPLE: git clone git@github.com:ddev/d11simple cd d11simple git worktree add ../fancy-feature-1 git worktree add ../fancy-feature-2

Without a branch argument, git worktree add creates a new branch named after the directory. To check out an existing branch instead:

git worktree add ../fancy-feature-1 origin/fancy-feature-1

The resulting layout:

D11SIMPLE/ ├── d11simple # primary clone (has .git/) ├── fancy-feature-1 # worktree checkout └── fancy-feature-2 # worktree checkout Setting Up the Database and Files

Export database and files from your primary project once, then import into each worktree:

# From ~/workspace/D11SIMPLE — create a shared tarball directory mkdir .tarballs # Export from the primary clone cd d11simple ddev export-db --file=../.tarballs/db.sql.gz # Adjust the path below for your CMS; web/sites/default/files is Drupal tar -C web/sites/default/files -czf ../.tarballs/files.tgz . # Import into a worktree cd ../fancy-feature-1 ddev start ddev import-db --file=../.tarballs/db.sql.gz ddev import-files --source=../.tarballs/files.tgz Key git worktree Commands git worktree add <path> # Usually a relative path git worktree list # Show all worktrees git worktree remove <name> # Remove a worktree Summary

• Remove name: from .ddev/config.yaml so each worktree uses its directory name as the project name
• Consider ddev config global --omit-project-name-by-default to make this behavior the default for all projects
• git worktree add <path> creates a new checkout sharing the same .git
• Import a database snapshot and files tarball into each worktree
• Each worktree gets its own DDEV project URL automatically

Join us for future trainings

• Sign up for the DDEV Newsletter to be informed about future trainings.
• Let us know your tips and tricks in Discord or here in the comments.

Claude Code was used to draft and review this blog.

Following on from my last article, an introduction to HTMX in Drupal, I wanted to start looking at examples of HTMX being used to power interactivity in Drupal in different ways.

I thought a good place to start this off would be to look at using HTMX in a simple controller. By creating a route to a controller we can render content and then inject HTMX attributes to perform actions with the same controller.

In this article I will put together a controller action to load some pages of content to display them as a list. An element containing HTMX attributes will be used to make a request back to the same controller action and generate more items in the list. These new items will be appended to the existing list along with another element containing HTMX attributes that we can use to request more items.

The HTMX element will act like a "load more" button, which will load more and more content as long as there is content to load.

All of the code contained in this article can be found in the Drupal HTMX examples project on GitHub, but here we will go through what the code does and what actions it performs to generate content.   

First, let's create the route to the controller.

The Route

The route we create here just links the path requested with the controller class. As we are only using a single action in this example we don't need to provide a second route for the HTMX request.

Read more

The Quiet Room at DrupalCon mtift March 28, 2026 March 28, 2026 Dries borrowed an idea from Fred Rogers at the Driesnote: stop everything and think of the people who helped you get here. Ten seconds. That moment, and the Quiet Room down the hall, changed how I experienced DrupalCon this year.

• Read more about The Quiet Room at DrupalCon
• Add new comment

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.

File attachments:  April_Sides_AWA.png

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.

 

Image

          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!

 

This year, Drupal turned 25. DrupalCon Chicago felt like the right place to mark that milestone. My keynote was part celebration and part wake-up call. I talked about Drupal's foundations, how AI is putting pressure on them, and why I believe we can rebuild them stronger than before.

If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below or download my slides (32.6 MB).

Site templates and the marketplace

About a year ago at DrupalCon Atlanta, I introduced the idea of site templates and a marketplace to go with them. By DrupalCon Vienna, we had one site template, but no marketplace.

In Chicago, I showed eleven site templates available in a basic marketplace at marketplace.drupal.org. All eleven can be installed directly from the Drupal CMS installer.

AI for site building

For more than 20 years, Drupal's ecosystem has rested on a stable triangle: the platform itself, digital agencies who bring Drupal into the real world, and the community that builds and maintains it. That triangle has proven remarkably resilient through many waves of new technologies.

But what happens when AI disrupts all three sides at the same time? In my keynote, I showed how we are responding.

I started off by showing a demo of a workflow I think will become common for Drupal agencies. You spend 15 minutes prototyping a website with AI, then convert it to a Drupal site with the help of AI and a skilled developer in a matter of hours.

AI gets you to a prototype fast. Drupal gives it the foundations that last.

Organizations will always need real workflows, permissions, security, scalability, integrations, compliance, and governance. Drupal is a great platform for this.

The demo worked because Drupal CMS ships with Drupal Canvas, which includes both CLI tools and AI skills. But the real magic comes from Drupal's foundations: the APIs, building blocks, and architecture we have developed over 25 years. This is the accidental AI advantage I talked about before. Drupal really is the best CMS for AI.

AI for content management

At DrupalCon Vienna, I introduced the Context Control Center as a rough prototype. Since then, we have added many features. It is now nearly production-ready.

The idea is straightforward: AI agents need good context to help manage tasks in Drupal. With the Context Control Center, teams define their brand voice, target audiences, key messages, product details, and editorial guidelines in one place. Then every AI agent on the site draws from this single source of truth. The result is that you create knowledge once, and scale it to all the pages and content on your website.

In my keynote, I showed two demos of the Context Control Center in action. First, Drupal's AI agents turn a simple marketing brief into a complete, on-brand page using Drupal Canvas, consulting the Context Control Center along the way. It followed brand rules, asked clarifying questions, generated structured data for search, and added cross-links.

Second, I showed a proof of concept for dynamic contexts, where the Context Control Center pulls in real-time data from Google Analytics to help improve content performance after publication.

Saying no to AI slop

AI is lowering the barrier to contribute to Open Source projects like Drupal. On paper, that sounds great. More contributors, more patches, more momentum.

But it can also be a real challenge. The volume of contributions is going up while the quality is going down. More patches are landing on a small group of maintainers, and reviewing low-quality code wastes their time.

If you're using AI to contribute, you are responsible for what you submit: don't submit code you don't understand. Our quality standards matter, and we will uphold them.

Drupal Growth Initiative

Having a great product is not enough. We also need to tell a great story. As we approach an important readiness milestone by DrupalCon Rotterdam this fall, the Drupal Association is ready to take marketing to the next level.

We are launching a Drupal Growth Initiative organized across three tracks:

• Enterprise Drupal growth
• Drupal CMS adoption
• AI leadership

Our craft always evolves

In my keynote, I also told the stories of two community members who embraced AI in a meaningful way.

Aidan Foster, who has been running Foster Interactive for 17 years, chose to go all in on the Drupal AI Initiative instead of staying on the sidelines. Together with his team, he is rebuilding the foundations of his agency to leverage AI and prepare for what is next.

And Jürgen Haas, a longtime contributor and creator of the ECA module, used AI to move at the speed of a team and make Drupal's ECA module much easier to use. In both cases, AI amplifies expertise. It does not replace it.

The world is being flooded with AI-generated average. Average is cheap now, but expertise remains hard-earned and valuable. This community has spent 25 years building it, and that is not something AI can replicate.

AI is the storm, and AI is the way through the storm. I said that first in Vienna. Six months later, I believe it more than ever. Not as a slogan, but as something I have watched happen. We need more people like Aidan and Jürgen. If you want to get involved, join us on Drupal Slack or attend DrupalCon Rotterdam this fall.

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.’

I'm trying here…

I got Claude to help me set up my Drupal (AI) Playground using Drupal Recipes. Claude is also writing my /docs and generating the project's CLAUDE.md (also known as an AGENTS.md) file. My exploration uses a variation of the crawl-walk-run approach to learning to use Claude Code.

At this point in my journey, running feels a little out of reach, which I am okay with because Agentic coding is a major software development paradigm shift. I'm eager to run and have Claude generate some 'production' and reviewable quality code for me. Still, when researching CLAUDE.md files, people recommend using or creating skills that simply offer reusable instructions to guide a prompt in the right direction. Installing some Drupal-specific skills should increase Claude's reliability when working with Drupal.

Still unsure what I'm doing here

I'm not sure what I'm doing here and am always seeking advice. The suggestions on Reddit range from adding agent skills and plugins to give Claude superpowers to the idea that Claude is already superpowered and doesn't need much help.

I'm skeptical about how much nudging Claude really needs when using skills. For example, I have been using Claude's Chat to plan a module without any additional context or information, and Claude is doing an excellent job generating a 'simple' module project specification. Claude fully understands Drupal APIs and some Drupalisms, but AIs are known to make mistakes; therefore, exploring skills is worthwhile and helpful for repetitive custom tasks, such as upgrading or refactoring codebases.

Ask the AI for help getting started

At this point in my AI journey, I'm between asking Claude to generate documentation and searching Google for references to include. I value that all my /docs have become iterative with AI, and I'm very optimistic...Read More

The DrupalCon Chicago 2026 Driesnote kicked off with a keynote that was equal parts celebration and wake-up call. With 1,310 attendees in the room and Drupal turning 25, Dries Buytaert delivered one of his most candid Driesnotes yet. He acknowledged a tough market, AI disruption hitting all sides of the Drupal ecosystem at once, and then laid out a concrete plan for what comes next.

This wasn’t the typical “look what we shipped” keynote. Dries shared personal stories, showed real working demos, and ended with a direct challenge to every person in the room. I want to walk you through the 10 things that stuck with me the most.

The numbers are settled. The questions are not. Following Drupal’s infrastructure cost breakdown, developers and organisations are now debating how open source systems should be funded—and who is responsible for keeping them running.