DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 : Tech and Business challenges

“Drupal is now far ahead of its reputation” summarized Dries Buytaert at the annual DrupalCon conference, held in late September in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Indeed, the founder of the free, open-source content management system (CMS) unveiled three main areas of focus at the 2026 event: headless front-end, AI, and multilingual support. While these are significant developments, they should not overshadow the end-of-life of Drupal 10, expected on December 9. Florian Pena, CTO, and David Renoux, Director of Digital Experience at Smile, discuss these announcements from the perspectives of architecture and business value.

Headless: Keep the back-end your teams are familiar with, and free up the front end

What was announced:

• Canvas Headless connects a decoupled front end to Drupal simply by entering its URL.
• Official starters are available for Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, Angular, and TanStack Start.
• Code Components are developed using React, TypeScript, and Tailwind.
• The Workbench lets you preview them without Storybook, and a CLI synchronizes your local environment with Drupal.

Business impact. “For Drupal veterans, this is a real game-changer,” says David Renoux, Director of Digital Experience at Smile. “Contributors retain the administration interface they’re familiar with: their workflows, permissions, visual editing, and live preview of the final output. They’re no longer forced to choose between a proven back-office system and a modern experience. The business challenge: redesigning the customer experience without migrating content or implementing a change management project for editorial teams.”

Technical aspects. “I agree, and I’ll take it a step further,” says Florian Pena, CTO at Smile: “Decoupling the front end means choosing the right rendering engine for each use case: from SSR or static rendering as close to users as possible for performance and Core Web Vitals, to rich interactions and a sophisticated UI where the user journey calls for it. There’s also a team aspect to it. React/TypeScript components open the project up to a much larger pool of front-end developers, and the npm ecosystem becomes usable as-is.”

What you need to know. Headless is an architectural choice, not a default setting. It adds a second application to host, secure, and maintain. For a simple editorial site, Drupal CMS with Canvas in classic mode often remains the best value for money. Canvas Headless is new: we recommend testing it on a pilot project.

Does this apply to you?

• Is your current front-end setup holding back your ambitions for user experience, performance, or time-to-market?
• Are your front-end teams already working with React, Vue, or Angular?
• Do you need to feed multiple channels (website, app, kiosks, portals) with the same content?

AI Connected to Your Content, Under Control

What was announced: Drupal AI positions itself as a “harness”—the layer that connects AI models to content, tools, and workflows, while enforcing permissions, safeguards, logging, and the freedom to choose a model. A public demo shows sourced responses to visitors (“it is not allowed to invent a response”), a content audit (accuracy, tone, inclusive language), and an assistant that prepares drafts across 10 pages without publishing anything. An external assistant can also connect via the MCP, while adhering to Drupal permissions.

Business implications. “AI is no longer just a gadget alongside the CMS—it works directly on your content,” explains David Renoux. “In practical terms, this offers two benefits, depending on your priorities. First, improved workflow efficiency: translation, rephrasing, classification, and first drafts. Second, quality: adherence to the brand guidelines, detection of low-quality content, and reliable responses to visitors. And humans remain in control, since nothing is published without approval.”

Technical aspects. According to Florian Pena, “The big announcement is the architecture. Drupal exposes its capabilities as tools (Tool API), accessible via MCP, the open standard for AI assistants. So it’s not a proprietary AI locked inside an editor.” He adds: “You plug in the model of your choice, including an LLM hosted in Europe or on-premises—that is, one under your own control. And the same tool works without AI: in a standard form or a workflow (FlowDrop, ECA, Maestro). Dries Buytaert sums it up this way: AI becomes a choice, not an obligation.”

It’s worth noting that this is also a compliance consideration. Permissions enforced, interactions logged, revisions retained, human validation: these are the foundations of traceability required by legal departments under the AI Act.

What You Need to Know. The editorial use cases are available for use today. The MCP connection is still based on a prototype implementation (Simple OAuth, MCP Server, and Tool API). We’re still working on simplifying the module’s exposure from approximately 1,000 lines of code to about 20 PHP attributes, and a “Rosetta Sprint” is still needed to align these APIs. The best place to start: a scoping workshop focused on two or three high-value use cases.

Does this apply to you?

• Do your teams spend a significant amount of time translating, rewriting, or quality-checking content?
• Are your employees already using AI assistants without any framework or traceability?
• Does your data policy require you to control the model and where it is hosted?

Multilingualism is once again an asset, not a project

What was announced:

• Drupal CMS 2.2 offers a language selector in the installer and a checklist-guided multilingual setup, with three levels of translation configuration.
• Canvas adds visual translation previews, native translation with a proofreading workflow, and optional AI-assisted translation.

Business Impact. “Multilingual support has historically been one of Drupal’s strengths, but it required a lot of configuration,” notes David Renoux. “For a group operating in multiple countries, or for a multilingual country like Luxembourg, Belgium, or Switzerland, this directly reduces time-to-market. You can launch a new market or a new language without having to start an integration project from scratch.”

Technical aspects. “What matters is that the translation goes through the same content model and the same review process,” notes Florian Pena. “The AI makes suggestions, a proofreader validates them, and Drupal maintains the history. In the demo, an assistant restored the Dutch versions of pages without altering the English versions. That’s exactly the level of control you’d expect on a multi-country site.”

Does this apply to you?

• Do you publish in more than two languages, or are you planning to enter new markets?
• Are your translation costs and turnaround times holding back your product launches?
• Do your subsidiaries manage separate websites because they lack a common multilingual platform?

The Timeline: Drupal 10 Is Ending, Drupal 12 Is Coming

According to the official timeline, Drupal 10 reaches end-of-life on December 9, 2026, and Drupal 10.6 is its final minor release. Drupal 12.0 is set to be released the week of December 7, 2026, alongside Drupal 11.5.

Business implications. For Smile’s Director of Digital Experience, this marks a shift from “interesting” to “I need to take action.” “A Drupal 10 site will no longer receive security patches after that date,” he says. “But an upgrade shouldn’t be just a technical expense: it’s the right time to decide what to do with the new features. Should we switch to Canvas? Should we decouple the front end? Should we enable editorial AI? Should we streamline multilingual sites?”

Technical aspects. “Since Drupal 8, major version upgrades have been incremental: they’re updates, not overhauls,” notes Florian Pena. The real work lies in auditing contrib modules and custom code, ensuring PHP compatibility, and clearing technical debt. Our recommendation: aim directly for Drupal 11, with a clear path toward Drupal 12, rather than tackling two projects back-to-back."

Does this apply to you?

• Are one or more of your sites still running on Drupal 10 (or earlier)?
• Do you have an up-to-date inventory of your contrib modules and custom code?
• Does your 2027 digital roadmap already include a budget for this version upgrade?

Digital sovereignty: our guiding principle for 25 years

What was said. Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal, called on Europe to reduce its dependence on technologies it does not control. He proposes the concept of “Stewarded Open Source”: open source that is maintained over the long term, with regular security releases, proven at scale, and “not owned by any particular vendor.” His contribution is cited in a European Commission recommendation. And he concludes: “Europe needs Drupal. And Drupal also needs Europe.” (source)

Business Implications. “Smile made open source its strategy 25 years ago, long before sovereignty became a topic for the executive committee,” notes David Renoux. He continues: “What Rotterdam shows is that this choice no longer requires a compromise. You can have a modern front end, useful AI, and seamless multilingual support without depending on a single vendor. For our clients, this translates to more predictable costs, true reversibility, and preserved bargaining power.”

Technical aspects. “From my perspective, sovereignty plays out on four levels,” explains Smile’s CTO. “The code: open-source, auditable, and maintained by a community. The data: hosted wherever you choose. The AI models: interchangeable, because the business value lies in the ‘harness’ (context, tools, safeguards) and not in the model. Integrations: standardized by MCP, an open protocol that allows any agent to work with Drupal without depending on a vendor. The announcements from Rotterdam reinforce all four of these levels at once.”

What’s next?

Dries Buytaert says it himself: Drupal is light-years ahead of its reputation. According to David Renoux, it’s now time to turn this lead into measurable value for organizations. For Florian Pena, we also need to be transparent about what’s ready today and what’s coming tomorrow.

Smile offers two starting points:

• a Drupal 10 → 11/12 assessment, which provides an inventory, cost estimates, and opportunities (Canvas, headless, AI) to capitalize on during the version upgrade;
• a half-day “AI in Drupal” workshop to identify two or three use cases, choose the model, and establish the governance framework.

Sources

• State of Drupal presentation (September 2026), Dries Buytaert
• DriesNote Rotterdam: Drupal is light-years ahead of its reputation, Drupal.org
• Drupal AI after the DriesNote Rotterdam, Drupal.org
• DrupalCon Rotterdam DriesNote Launches Advocacy Program and Proposes Rosetta Sprint, The DropTimes
• Drupal Core Schedule Confirms 2026 Release and Support Timeline, The DropTimes