Visual Building with Canvas

Hi Readers,

At DrupalCon Europe 2025 in Vienna, Dries Buytaert used his keynote (“Driesnote”) to outline Drupal’s AI-first direction. He described AI as a major shift in how people use the web and emphasised that Drupal will evolve to meet it. Instead of focusing on new features, his keynote detailed a strategy to improve usability and integrate AI throughout the platform. The highlight was Drupal Canvas, a visual site-building tool designed to make Drupal more accessible for all users. For full context, see Dries’s State of Drupal presentation, October 2025.

The community has quickly embraced this direction. Over the past 18 months, contributions to Drupal have nearly doubled, helped by the “Starshot” initiative. That progress led to Drupal Canvas, which combines Drupal’s structured content system with a more intuitive interface. Dries described it as Drupal “repositioned for creators, marketers, and enterprise users.” Canvas launches alongside Site Templates, Recipes, Code Components, and a new Mercury design system, all aimed at simplifying setup and improving site-building efficiency.

According to the Canvas project page, users can now build and theme entire sites directly in their browser, with little or no code. Non-developers can design and edit visually, while editors can modify content anywhere on a page. Canvas still leverages Drupal’s core strengths—structured content and granular permissions—to maintain consistency and control. It’s a major step toward making Drupal approachable without losing its technical flexibility.

The mix of Canvas and AI has become a central topic across the Drupal community. Canvas introduces faster, collaborative site building, while new AI tools can generate page layouts, assist with content, and suggest updates within Drupal’s workflow. These improvements make it easier for small teams or non-technical users to maintain complex sites efficiently. A production-ready Drupal Canvas 1.0 is expected in November 2025, becoming the default experience in Drupal CMS 2.0 by January 2026, followed by a template marketplace in March 2026.