Top Frontend and Backend Sessions to Attend at Drupal Mountain Camp 2025

Drupal Mountain Camp 2025 promises an exciting lineup of sessions tailored for developers, designers, and site builders looking to deepen their expertise in Drupal. Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Davos, Switzerland, this event fosters collaboration and innovation through expert-led presentations, interactive workshops, and hands-on coding sessions.  

This year’s program features diverse tracks, covering everything from cutting-edge frontend development techniques to robust backend solutions. Whether you're interested in theming, performance optimization, headless Drupal, or backend architecture, these sessions offer valuable insights from seasoned professionals.  

In this article, we explore the key frontend and backend sessions, highlighting the must-attend talks that will help you enhance your Drupal skills. Get ready to dive into the latest advancements, exchange ideas, and make meaningful connections within the Drupal community.

Backend

1. Leveraging the Migrate API to synchronize Data

Drupal's Migrate API simplifies data integration by providing a robust ETL framework for importing and synchronizing external data. This session covers key use cases, strategies for mapping data, advanced synchronization patterns, and extending capabilities with custom plugins. Attendees will explore challenges, best practices, and practical demonstrations, concluding with an interactive Q&A. The session, "Leveraging the Migrate API to synchronize Data," will be presented by Hudson Muff.

2. PostgreSQL and MySQL can do JSON too

PostgreSQL and MySQL offer powerful JSON capabilities, enabling flexible data handling without requiring a NoSQL database. This session explores how to leverage built-in JSON functions to store, query, and manipulate JSON data within relational databases, combining structured reliability with unstructured flexibility for more efficient data management. David Buchmann is the speaker of the session "PostgreSQL and MySQL can do JSON too".

3. SPARC: energy management with Drupal

SPARC is a Drupal-based solution for optimizing solar energy use by scheduling high-energy appliances based on forecasted yields. Using the ECA module for integration, InfluxDB for data storage, and Discord for schedule sharing, SPARC offers an open-source, cost-effective approach to smarter home energy management without relying on proprietary cloud services. Jasper Lammens leads the session, "SPARC: energy management with Drupal".

4. Recipes - How Drupal CMS is being built

This session, "Recipes - How Drupal CMS is being built" explores Drupal Recipes, detailing their functionality, dependencies, configuration, and default content capabilities. Attendees will learn what Recipes are (and aren’t), their limitations, and how they are used in Drupal CMS and Paragraphs. The talk includes a practical overview of Recipes and their future role in Drupal development. The speaker is Sascha Grossenbacher.

Frontend

1. Drupal Starterkit featuring the In-Page Editor blökkli

This session, "Drupal Starterkit featuring the In-Page Editor blökkli," introduces the blökkli editor, an interactive page-building experience for Nuxt using Drupal Paragraphs as a backend. It covers the Drupal Starter Kit, released at DrupalCon Barcelona, showing how to quickly set up headless Drupal applications with DDEV and Lando for an improved in-page editing experience. Jon Minder and Jens Vranckx leads the session.

2. Next.js Basics for Drupal developers

This session, "Next.js Basics for Drupal developers," introduces Next.js from a Drupal developer’s perspective, exploring its concepts, pros, and cons. It highlights how Next.js and Drupal complement each other for modern web development. Through coding examples, attendees will learn key Next.js features and see a full Next.js app built and deployed with a headless Drupal backend.  Lukas Fischer is the speaker.

3. The Quest for Modern Frontend Tooling in Drupal (without decoupling)

This session explores modern frontend tooling for Drupal theming without full decoupling. It demonstrates how to use Vite, HMR, Single Directory Components, TailwindCSS, and Storybook to enhance development. Attendees will learn the benefits, challenges, and future possibilities with DXB and JSX, improving the Drupal frontend developer experience. This session, "The Quest for Modern Frontend Tooling in Drupal (without decoupling)" will be presented by Guzman Bellon.