News Roundup

The 2025 International Splash Awards wrapped up at DrupalCon Vienna, spotlighting the year’s most innovative Drupal projects. Global winners ranged from e-commerce platforms to AI-driven tools. Visit splashawards.org to see who won and learn about next year’s expanded categories.

Morpht’s Murray Woodman explores using confusion matrices to improve Drupal search relevancy. The method focuses on recall and false negatives—measured through real user queries and expected results. With Solr and Drupal Search API, site owners can fine-tune search for broader user satisfaction.

DrupalCon Europe 2025 has announced its official Community Party for October 15 in Vienna. The event runs from 8 PM to 1 AM at Palais Wertheim and is free for badge holders. Expect music, food, and informal networking—arrive early as entry is limited to 800 guests.

Dries Buytaert opened DrupalCon Vienna with a bold keynote titled “The Map of the Web Is Being Redrawn.” He challenged the role of websites in an AI-dominated web—and positioned Drupal to lead, not follow. With Canvas, Mercury, and AI integration, Drupal is evolving into a platform for the next era of digital creation.

Dries Buytaert just dropped the future of Drupal at Vienna. AI, Canvas, automation—Drupal’s ready to ride the storm. And it’s all open, structured, and built for what’s next.

DrupalCon Europe just introduced Miffy as the new official mascot for DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026. She replaces Franz Jozef, the beloved plush from 2025, now retired, with an auction in Vienna. Catch Miffy on tour across Europe and snap a selfie for your chance to win tickets to Rotterdam.

The 2025 Women in Drupal Awards were announced today at DrupalCon Vienna, spotlighting three standout contributors. Emma Horrell, Sinduri Guntupalli, and Jess—also known as xjm—were recognised for leadership, platform stability, and global impact. These awards honour work that drives Drupal forward, often behind the scenes and beyond code.

Developer Andres Torres shares a Drupal tutorial on enriching photo content with Exif and GPS data. Using Exif, File Metadata Manager, and Leaflet, photos can auto-populate maps and camera details. A helper module automates field population—ideal for travel blogs and media-rich Drupal sites.

Dries Buytaert shared how he built a personal photo-sharing site powered by Drupal. A custom module lets him publish monthly galleries and generate newsletter-friendly views with one click. The project reflects Drupal’s power for privacy-focused, human-centered digital workflows.

DrupalCon Vienna kicks off today, spotlighting sessions on tech innovation, community care, and inclusion. Opening keynote speaker Vera Herzmann explores neurodiversity as a hidden strength in tech teams. With AI, design systems, and post-COVID community rebuilding on the agenda, this week maps Drupal’s future.

The fourth Drupal Meetup Zaragoza takes place on October 15 at 6:30 p.m. at Avenida Navarra 54. Open to all levels, it offers talks, demos, and community networking for Drupal users. Aimed at building a stronger local scene, it’s free and open to everyone curious about Drupal.

drunomics is all in at DrupalCon Vienna 2025, launching mossbo and sponsoring at the Gold level. Their cloud CMS, mossbo, builds on Lupus Decoupled with new AI and Drupal Canvas features. Attendees can catch three sessions or visit Booth G5 to see how headless Drupal is evolving.

Registration is now open for Drupal Developer Days 2026 in Athens, running from April 22 to 25. The event features sessions, keynotes, and daily contribution opportunities, including a full Contribution Day on Saturday. Early bird tickets start at 90 euros, with student and on-site options available.

Pantheon has joined the Drupal AI Initiative as a Gold Member, injecting deep Google Gemini integration and AI enhancements into Drupal’s ecosystem. They’re backing the Tool API module, building a Magic Search LLM‑based contextual search module, and collaborating on a Gemini provider plugin. At DrupalCon Vienna, they’ll demo how AI can power site search, content workflows, and agentic operations in Drupal.

Morpht’s Murray Woodman explores “regime”-based personalization to improve CMS search accuracy. Regimes include user behavior, interests, and roles, influencing relevance beyond just keywords. For Drupal, this means pairing semantic search with smart context signals to reduce false positives.

Pantheon’s Alejandro Moreno shared what excites him most about DrupalCon Vienna 2025. From Drupal AI and Canvas to community energy and CMS evolution, his list reflects Drupal’s growing momentum. As a DA Board member, he also highlights the importance of strategy, sustainability, and showing up beyond the bubble.

The Drupal AI module is nearing its 1.2.0 release, featuring new updates and improvements for stability. Key highlights include an AI Observability module, PDF-to-text via native PHP, and an upgraded chatbot UI. From logging to automators, the focus is on enterprise-ready AI without third-party lock-in.

Zoocha returns to DrupalCon Europe as a sponsor for the first time since 2012. The UK agency will lead four sessions on accessibility, content architecture, routing, and community resilience. Their refreshed branding and open-source commitment take center stage in Vienna.

Get ready for Trivia Night at DrupalCon Vienna on October 16 from 8 to 11 PM. Held at Gleisgarten, the pub quiz features six rounds on Drupal, tech, and general trivia. It’s device-free, team-based, and a great way to unwind and connect with the community.

DrupalFit has launched the DrupalFit Challenge – Vienna Edition 2025. The contest audits Drupal sites for performance, security, accessibility, and SEO. Top-scoring sites win Apple prizes and are spotlighted at DrupalCon Vienna.

At DrupalCon Vienna, Shibin Das will demo real-time Drupal notifications using WebSockets and Redis. The session showcases a decoupled, Firebase-free system where Drupal and Node.js securely push live updates. It’s a must-see for developers seeking scalable, vendor-free real-time features in Drupal.

Acquia’s hosting a webinar on “The State of Web Governance” this October 28. Get insights into accessibility, AI, and compliance — and a look at what’s next for Acquia Web Governance. Speakers from Acquia and Axelerant will break down the roadmap and new innovations.

At DrupalCamp Italy, Luca Lusso is breaking down the Drupal AI Initiative. He’ll show what’s already live, what’s in the works, and how AI is shaping Drupal’s future. Catch him November 14 in Rome — and hear what’s next for Drupal and AI.

amazee.io is the official sponsor of DrupalCon Vienna 2025, spotlighting open source AI and cloud-native Drupal hosting. At Booth #9 and in key sessions, Michael Schmid, Dan Lemon, and Matthew Saunders will share real-world use cases and private AI strategies. From scaling infrastructure to improving Drupal storytelling, amazee.io is helping shape the future of the platform.

This week in Drupal: DrupalCon Vienna headlines a packed week of global events. Join meetups, trainings, and community gatherings from Austin to Zaragoza.

ContentSync introduces the ProseMirror module as a structured alternative to CKEditor for Drupal. It stores content in JSON, not HTML—unlocking better omnichannel delivery and headless flexibility. Designed to be CKEditor-familiar, it bridges modern frontend demands with a seamless authoring experience.

The Drop Times previews DrupalCon Vienna 2025, happening October 14–17 at the Austria Centre. Over 100 sessions, keynotes on AI, and inclusion-focused community events are on the agenda. From MCP module demos to accessibility grants, DrupalCon Vienna promises depth, insight, and impact.

Acquia spotlights CKEditor’s impact on Drupal content workflows in a new customer video. Mrina Sugosh, Lead Developer Relations at CKEditor, explains how the tool improves collaboration and eliminates formatting issues. For site teams, it means faster, cleaner publishing—all within the Drupal ecosystem.

DrupalCon Europe 2025 organisers have issued a final call for lunch sponsorship. The "Drupal in a Day" session on October 17 will host up to 50 newcomers in Vienna. Sponsors gain brand exposure during a key networking break aimed at onboarding fresh talent.

Shibin Das is asking the Drupal community about scaling Server-Sent Events. His experiments show practical limits well below theory on modest servers. The insights will shape his October 16 talk at DrupalCon Vienna.

ImageX’s Nadiia Nykolaichuk explains how to protect Drupal forms from spam using CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA. Her guide covers top modules like CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA v3, hCaptcha, and Cloudflare Turnstile. Site builders can follow detailed Composer-based setup steps to boost form security effectively.

The official schedule for NEDCamp 2025 is now live at nedcamp.org. Held November 14–15 in Rhode Island, it includes training, summits, and contribution events. Drupal professionals across roles are invited to join, learn, and connect in person.

Coming up at DrupalCon Vienna: streamline your site builds with recipe-based installations. 1xINTERNET shows how they transformed an old distribution into a modern Drupal CMS setup. Get ready to ditch profiles and embrace recipes for flexible, scalable Drupal development.

Specbee’s Justin K. Johnson breaks down translation options for multilingual Drupal sites. He compares AI-powered modules with tools like Lingotek, outlining trade-offs in cost, control, and scale. His takeaway: start with Drupal-native AI and scale up only when governance demands grow.

Mike Herchel of Dripyard is presenting two sessions at DrupalCon Vienna 2025. One dives into impactful Drupal contributions with Matt Glaman; the other explores AI theming with Drupal Canvas. Catch his talks on Wednesday and Thursday at 4:15 pm or find him in the hallway track demoing Dripyard themes.

Acquia is holding a webinar on October 22 called “Beyond Storage: Smarter Content, Bigger Impact with DAM + AI.” It will explore how DAM systems + AI can help organise content, boost discovery, and enforce accessibility. Speakers Jake Athey (Acquia) and Jill Roberson (Velir) will offer actionable insights for content teams.

DrupalEasy today launches Show & Tell, a YouTube series with live, practical demos of Drupal techniques.
Episodes run ~30–45 minutes and pair Anello with subject matter experts in real time. The goal: make Drupal learning more approachable by showing real problem-solving, not just polished tutorials.

The Drupal Ahmedabad Meetup happens this Saturday, October 11 at cmsMinds, Prahlad Nagar, starting at 10:00 AM IST. Jitesh Khatwani will introduce Mautic, the open-source marketing automation tool, followed by Ujval Shah on how agencies can unlock new growth with Drupal. Join for learning, collaboration, and a community discussion on upcoming events and initiatives.

George Bonnici has published a tutorial on building a custom Hero component in Drupal 11’s new Canvas visual builder. He explains how developers can use Single Directory Components to create reusable, responsive designs with clean HTML, Twig, and CSS. The guide shows how Canvas lets editors assemble pages visually while keeping performance, structure, and design consistency.

Randy Fay from DDEV has released a quick guide on setting up DDEV on Linux in just ten minutes. It walks developers through installing Docker, enabling HTTPS, and running a demo Drupal 11 site. The tutorial also shows how to use PhpStorm and Xdebug for smooth debugging inside DDEV.

Drupal content editors often bounce between screens to perform routine tasks. With Field Widget Actions, you can embed buttons or triggers directly into field editors to do things like renaming images or launching automations. Artem Dmitriiev will show how to build and attach these plugins, making the editing experience faster, smarter, and more seamless.

At DrupalCon Vienna 2025, Daniil Borysenko from 1xINTERNET will present a session on creating a unified analytics framework for large-scale Drupal multisite platforms. He’ll show how reusable Google Tag Manager and GA4 configurations streamline data consistency, onboarding, and reporting across more than 50 sites. The talk runs on October 15 from 16:15 to 17:00 in Hall G1—a must-see for teams managing complex analytics setups.

The 10th Drupaladas meetup takes place this Friday, October 10, at 6:00 p.m. CEST, featuring a live session for Spanish-speaking Drupal community members on recording events with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). Presenter Óscar Novás will teach how to set up scenes, manage audio, and even automate tasks using Python. The event runs as a Slack huddle in #drupal-es—open to everyone, no registration needed.

Mario Hernandez shares a simple CSS method to keep image captions aligned with their images. Using inline-size: fit-content and contain: inline-size, captions now stay within the image width without layout hacks. It’s a clean, accessible, and performant approach ideal for maintaining visual consistency in Drupal sites.

Drupal core maintainer Kevin Quillen has released Alpha7 of the Search API Solr Dense Vector Field module — bringing vector-based semantic search closer to production for Drupal 10 and 11. This release adds a plugin-based ranking system, letting developers define custom algorithms and choose embedding models through the Drupal AI module. It’s a key milestone in enabling smarter, natural-language search powered by Solr and AI embeddings.

At DrupalCon Vienna 2025, developers can get hands-on with AI in a beginner-friendly workshop hosted by 1xINTERNET and Dropsolid. Led by Christoph Breidert and Frederik Wouters, the session walks attendees through installing the Drupal AI module, generating content, summarizing PDFs, and building custom AI agents with RAG. It’s a practical introduction to making Drupal sites smarter—no machine learning background required.