State of Drupal presentation (September 2026)

Drupal is now light-years forward of its repute. Closing that hole is our #1 problem, and it was the principle message of my DrupalCon Rotterdam keynote.

Just over two years in the past, I launched Drupal Starshot. I did it as a result of I wasn’t certain we may nonetheless innovate like we used to. It seems we are able to.

Starshot turned Drupal CMS, which brings collectively Site Templates, Recipes, Drupal AI, Drupal Canvas and extra to make constructing web sites simpler.

Alongside that work, Drupal Core has change into a sooner and higher framework for builders. A stronger Drupal Core helps us construct a greater Drupal CMS, whereas constructing Drupal CMS has pushed additional enhancements in Drupal Core.

Unfortunately, many individuals exterior the Drupal group have not seen what Drupal can do immediately. In Rotterdam, I confirmed how far we’ve got come and the place we’re going subsequent, and we launched an advocacy program to assist extra individuals see how nice Drupal has change into.

If you missed the keynote, you may watch the video below or download my slides (86 MB).

§More methods to succeed in extra individuals

The first a part of my keynote confirmed enhancements for multilingual websites, JavaScript front-ends, headless Canvas, and Drupal AI.

Drupal has lengthy had robust multilingual capabilities, however Drupal Canvas, our highly effective new web page builder, did not but assist multilingual websites. Not solely did we add multilingual assist to Canvas, however we made all multilingual websites simpler to arrange.

React has one of many international stage’s largest developer communities. Drupal Canvas code parts are written in React, and we designed the developer expertise across the instruments, patterns, and workflows front-end JavaScript builders already know. They can use their most popular growth instruments, together with trendy AI-assisted workflows, with out having to study Drupal-specific ideas or conventions. We’ve continued to make that have higher, decreasing the barrier for a a lot bigger group of builders to construct with Drupal.

At DrupalCon, we prolonged that very same mannequin with Drupal Canvas Headless. Developers can now use Drupal to handle content material whereas constructing the front-end individually with frameworks like Next.js, Astro, TanStack, Angular, or Nuxt. Editors nonetheless get the visible expertise of Drupal Canvas: they will construct pages in Drupal and preview precisely how these pages will seem on the front-end.

This adjustments an essential trade-off. Teams now not have to decide on between a contemporary JavaScript front-end and Drupal Canvas’ visible authoring expertise. They can have each. That opens Drupal to extra builders, extra front-end architectures, and extra forms of tasks.

Drupal AI is shifting so quick that I may have stuffed a complete keynote with it. Instead, we launched a new Drupal AI demo the place individuals can expertise Drupal AI for themselves. It comes preconfigured, making it straightforward to discover what Drupal AI can do and even present it to clients.

With the most recent Drupal AI, you may ask questions and get solutions grounded in your website’s content material. You can audit your content material in opposition to model pointers, translate content material, classify content material, construct pages and React parts with AI, and extra. Through MCP, AI assistants can work with Drupal content material from exterior Drupal.

What excites me most is the muse beneath all of this. Drupal AI turns Drupal into an AI harness: organizations can join AI fashions to structured content material, instruments, and workflows, whereas retaining management by permissions, guardrails, observability, metering, and a selection of AI fashions.

§Opening Drupal’s capabilities to different software program

The second a part of my keynote checked out one other essential shift: AI assistants can provide individuals a brand new technique to work with Drupal.

In one demo, an editor merely requested an AI assistant to unpublish a web page. They did not have to know the place to click on or perceive Drupal’s revisions, moderation workflows, or permissions. The assistant translated their intent into motion, however Drupal remained in management: it checked whether or not the editor was allowed to unpublish the web page and utilized the positioning’s publishing guidelines, simply as it could if that they had performed it by hand.

If you wish to see the demo in additional element, Scott Falconer, who labored on it, recorded a behind-the-scenes walkthrough exhibiting the right way to set it up your self, what occurs beneath the hood, and the right way to get entangled.

That demo was constructed on the Tool module, which I consider is likely one of the most essential modules for Drupal builders to observe. Drupal modules already include hundreds of helpful capabilities: publishing content material, managing customers, processing media, altering configuration, and far more. The Tool module provides builders a regular technique to expose these capabilities so AI assistants and different software program can uncover and use them.

Today, exposing current capabilities as instruments can nonetheless require an excessive amount of code. My personal album module did not expose instruments, and making its current capabilities obtainable to an AI assistant took about 1,000 extra strains of code.

But as soon as these instruments have been obtainable, the worth turned apparent. Adding MCP assist has already modified how I handle the greater than 10,000 photographs on my website. Tasks that used to take loads of time can now be performed a lot sooner and extra precisely with an AI assistant, whereas Drupal nonetheless manages the content material, permissions, and workflows beneath.

That expertise strengthened one thing I wrote about in AI and the great CMS unbundling: AI can tackle extra of the execution work whereas Drupal stays the management layer. I anticipate extra organizations will wish to handle components of their websites by AI assistants. AI could make advanced duties a lot sooner and simpler with out giving up the construction, governance, and safeguards that Drupal supplies.

I consider hundreds of module builders will finally wish to expose their capabilities in the identical means, so I’ve been working with Matt Glaman to make it a lot simpler. Matt has been growing a change to the Tool API that lets builders expose current PHP strategies as instruments utilizing attributes.

The concept is easy: add PHP attributes to an current methodology to explain its title, function, inputs and outputs. In my album module, roughly 1,000 strains of integration code turned about 20 attributes. My website already makes use of the experimental department, and we’re working to get it merged into the Tool module correct.

And this is not solely about AI. The similar instruments may be known as by AI assistants over MCP, by different functions over HTTP, or used to generate schemas for JavaScript parts and join Drupal modules to workflow programs like ECA, FlowDrop, and Maestro. The video beneath reveals StreamDrop utilizing capabilities uncovered by my album module:

§Talk louder about Drupal

In the final a part of my keynote, I got here again to Drupal’s repute hole. We could make monumental progress with Drupal, however that does not mechanically change what individuals or AI brokers consider it. For instance, an AI coding agent I tested in June did not even point out Drupal CMS or Site Templates when it evaluated Drupal.

Over the previous few years, a lot of my private focus has been on accelerating innovation in Drupal. That work is paying off, and we’ve got actual product momentum. I’m now shifting extra of my consideration to the opposite facet of the equation: ensuring individuals see what we have constructed, perceive what has modified, and know why it issues.

So I introduced the Drupal Advocacy Program, led by the Drupal Association.

Drupal already has a contribution credit score system. It acknowledges the individuals who contribute to Drupal and the organizations that assist their work. For companies, these credit additionally assist decide visibility within the Drupal market. Until now, we have been significantly better at recognizing technical contributions and monetary assist than advocacy work.

The new Drupal Advocacy Program will change that. Advocacy work can now earn contribution credit score, and work that reaches individuals exterior the prevailing Drupal group can earn extra weight.

If we wish to shut Drupal’s repute hole, we will not solely speak to individuals who already know Drupal properly. We want extra talks at exterior occasions, articles in broader publications, buyer tales, demos, tutorials, and different work that helps individuals see what Drupal can do immediately.

Blue Drop Labs is an efficient instance of what I imply. The day after the DriesNote, they printed a publish on building a website with Drupal CMS and Canvas Headless. The mission itself was already stay, however they shortly turned that work right into a story others may study from, with demos exhibiting how editors and builders work with Drupal immediately.

That is precisely what I imply by “speaking louder”. There is already loads of spectacular Drupal work taking place. We have to do a greater job of exhibiting it to the international stage.

I used to be just a little nervous about asserting the Advocacy Program. We’ve wrestled with Drupal’s repute hole for a very long time, and I felt we wanted to do greater than acknowledge it. Using contribution credit score to reward advocacy was a concrete technique to change the incentives, however I wasn’t certain how the group would react.

It turned out to be one of many best-received bulletins of the keynote. That response gave me confidence that individuals have been able to act on the repute hole, not simply acknowledge it.

You can learn how to earn Drupal advocacy credit and submit your advocacy work.

My ask is easy: speak louder about Drupal, particularly to individuals exterior our group. Drupal would not want hype, however we do want a greater public document. We want extra individuals exhibiting, with actual examples, what Drupal can do immediately.

I wish to prolong my gratitude to everybody who contributed to creating my presentation and demos a hit. A particular thanks to Bálint Kléri, Christoph Breidert, Gábor Hojtsy, Lauri Timmanee, Matt Glaman, Michael Lander, Pamela Barone, Shibin Das, and the Drupal AI partners. Many others contributed not directly to make this doable. If I’ve inadvertently omitted anybody, please attain out.