Umbraco at Codegarden 2026: Community, AI and a Platform Growing with Confidence

A key moment in the Keynote was the recognition of Umbraco’s MVPs, both new and renewed for 2026. Umbraco said it had broken records for the number of MVPs in the ecosystem, even while continuing to hire people from the community into Umbraco itself. 

The MVP section was more than a ceremonial moment. It underlined how much Umbraco relies on people who contribute through packages, documentation, events, mentoring, feedback, talks and community leadership. Umbraco also highlighted a sold-out MVP Summit, bringing together around 100 MVPs to share knowledge and discuss what comes next. 

We’re also very proud to say that our own Andy Boot and Matt Swain have once again been renewed as Umbraco MVPs. 

For us at Pixelbuilders, that recognition means a lot. MVP status is not just about technical knowledge, although Andy and Matt have plenty of that. It also reflects ongoing contribution, support for the wider community and a commitment to helping Umbraco continue to improve. It is brilliant to see their work recognised again.

Alongside the MVPs, Umbraco gave thanks to the different community teams and advisory groups that help guide the platform. These include groups focused on areas such as Cloud, Commerce, AI, community, orchestration, the CMS advisory board, diversity and inclusion, security and privacy, and sustainability. 

For businesses, this is one of Umbraco’s quieter strengths. The platform is not being developed in isolation. It is shaped by feedback from agencies, developers, editors, product specialists and people delivering websites every day. 

That makes the roadmap more grounded in practical needs, rather than being driven only by internal assumptions. As Mats put it during the Keynote, the danger in software development is building what you think is useful internally, only to find that customers do not need it. Community input helps Umbraco avoid that. 

Another major theme was the growth of Umbraco’s package ecosystem. 

Umbraco also acknowledged that the growing Marketplace creates new challenges. 

For developers, packages are a way to move quickly and avoid reinventing the wheel. For businesses, however, there are reasonable questions around trust, support, quality and long-term maintenance. 

Mats Persson spoke about the need for more metadata, clearer signals and potentially stronger ways to show whether a package is supported, what versions it works with and how reliable it is likely to be. 

This is especially important when Umbraco is being compared with larger enterprise platforms. Umbraco’s answer is often that the platform can do the same things, but sometimes through a combination of core functionality, packages and implementation choices. The next challenge is making that easier to communicate, especially to organisations that need reassurance before choosing a platform. 

That is why the discussion around “pathways” was important. Umbraco wants to help people understand how to assemble the right solution for a particular requirement, using the CMS, Cloud, commercial products, AI features and community packages together. 

In other words, the Marketplace is not just a catalogue of add-ons. It is becoming a key part of how Umbraco demonstrates its capability as a platform.

In the Product Keynote, Filip Bech-Larsen summarised Umbraco’s product direction as a mature platform that developers love and businesses trust. That balance matters. 

For developers, Umbraco is continuing to focus on flexibility, extensibility and modern .NET development. For businesses, the emphasis is on reliability, security, performance and confidence in the platform. 

Umbraco highlighted its ISO 27001 certification, alongside a 100% SLA policy for Umbraco Cloud on Professional and Enterprise plans. These are the kinds of signals that matter when organisations are choosing a CMS for business-critical websites and digital services. 

Umbraco also referenced strong G2 results, including positive ratings around return on investment and time to market. That fits with what many Umbraco teams already know: the platform is flexible enough for developers, but approachable enough for editors and content teams. 

A major CMS announcement was the introduction of Elements, a new native content type for reusable, non-routable content. 

In simple terms, Elements allow teams to create content that does not need its own page but can be reused across a site. A good example is an author profile. Instead of recreating author details on every article, editors can manage the author once in the new Library section and reference that same item wherever it is needed. 

This is especially useful for structured content, content reuse, multilingual websites and larger editorial teams. The Library section and new Element Picker are due in Umbraco 18, with Element Blocks planned for later. 

Umbraco 17 is the latest long-term support version and is positioned as the stable choice for teams that value predictability. A key update in Umbraco 17 is improved load balancing, including the ability to scale the management side of Umbraco as well as the delivery side. 

This is particularly useful for larger projects, especially where there are lots of editors working in the back office or where the CMS itself has higher performance requirements. 

Umbraco 18 is also close, with a release candidate already available at the time of the Product Keynote. This is where the new Library section and Element Picker are expected to arrive. 

There was also an important reminder for anyone still running Umbraco 13. It is scheduled to reach end of life later this year, so now is the time to start planning upgrade routes. For organisations that need more time, Umbraco’s XLTS offering remains an option.

AI was one of the biggest themes across both keynotes, but Umbraco framed it in a practical way. 

Their principles are that AI should be on your terms, modular and available everywhere Umbraco is used. That means developers and users should stay in control, AI features should be optional and interchangeable, and AI should support more than just content editing in the back office. 

Umbraco split its AI strategy into two sides. 

The first is Umbraco in AI, which is about making Umbraco work better with AI tools. This includes MCP, the Model Context Protocol, which allows AI assistants to talk to Umbraco. Umbraco has already been working on its MCP server and has improved it over the last year to make it more accurate, powerful and efficient. 

The Product Keynote also introduced a new remote MCP for Umbraco Cloud users. This removes much of the local setup and allows tools such as ChatGPT to connect to Umbraco via Umbraco ID. It is planned to be free in Umbraco Cloud, with beta availability in the summer and wider release expected later. 

Umbraco also announced work around a CLI tool and SDK to help developers create MCP support for their own systems, as long as they have an OpenAPI schema. That could make more parts of a project “agent ready” much more quickly. 

The second side is AI in Umbraco, which is about building AI features directly into the Umbraco experience. Umbraco AI acts as the foundation layer, providing governance, provider choice, testing, guardrails and control. This is designed to help organisations use AI safely, for example by preventing sensitive information such as personal data or credit card details from being sent to an AI provider. 

On top of that foundation, Umbraco is expanding features such as semantic search, AI prompts, Copilot, voice input, file uploads and AI agents. The direction is clear: AI should help editors, developers and businesses complete useful tasks faster, while still keeping humans in control. 

AI is accelerating contribution 

One of the most interesting points from the Keynote was how AI is changing contribution. 

Umbraco talked about developers being able to create useful packages much faster than before, supported by AI tools that understand Umbraco well because the platform is open source and well documented. That gives Umbraco a real advantage in the current AI shift. 

This is where Umbraco’s AI direction feels practical. It is not just about adding a chatbot to the CMS. It is about helping developers and editors solve common problems more quickly, while keeping flexibility, governance and choice. 

The AI Log Analyzer package is a good example of that. It takes a common developer task, understanding logs, and makes it easier to act on from inside the back office. Because it is built on Umbraco AI, it also works with Umbraco’s guardrails, helping teams stay in control of what information is sent to an AI provider. 

One of the biggest new announcements was Umbraco Automate. 

Automate is a new workflow tool for creating triggers and actions directly inside the Umbraco back office. For example, a team could trigger an action when content is saved, media is uploaded or a form is submitted. 

Those actions could send a Slack notification, call a webhook, run an AI agent, transcribe media, update a content property or request human approval before continuing. 

The potential is significant because it brings automation closer to the content and digital experience teams who need it. Instead of every workflow requiring a custom integration from scratch, Automate gives teams a structured way to connect events and actions inside Umbraco. 

Umbraco also made clear that Automate is built for extension. Developers can create their own triggers and actions, and there is already support planned around popular packages including Translation Manager and Newsletter Studio. 

Umbraco Automate is free, open source and available as a beta, with the final version expected shortly after Codegarden.

Umbraco Compose was another important part of the Product Keynote. 

Compose is designed to orchestrate data from multiple systems, such as a CMS, PIM, CRM and ERP, and make it available through a single headless API. For organisations with complex digital architecture, this could help reduce the spaghetti of integrations that often builds up over time. 

Umbraco also shared updates across its wider product suite. 

Umbraco Engage has gained explicit scoring, deploy support and further work around AI integration. Engage is focused on personalisation, segmentation and experimentation, so these updates should help teams deliver more targeted digital experiences. 

Umbraco Forms now includes a new analytics section, helping teams understand how forms are performing over time, when people are using them and whether workflows are failing. Forms has also gained MCP support, allowing AI tools to help create forms and analyse results. 

Umbraco Commerce continues to gain traction, with Umbraco referencing a large Nordic fitness chain running hundreds of gyms and more than half a million members on top of Umbraco Commerce. New work includes a customer portal and customer management features. 

Umbraco Deploy has received quality-of-life improvements, including clearer environment indicators, transfer queue updates and licensing changes that make it more attractive for teams running some projects in Cloud and others outside Cloud. 

Together, these updates show that Umbraco is continuing to grow beyond traditional content management. It is becoming a broader digital experience platform, while still keeping the flexibility and developer-friendly foundations that made it popular in the first place. 

Cloud was another major focus. 

Umbraco shared that traffic across Umbraco Cloud projects has continued to grow, with the platform now handling more than six petabytes of data and over 100 billion requests. It also highlighted the role of Cloudflare DDoS protection, which Umbraco said had helped protect more than 5,000 projects from attacks over the last year. 

There are also several improvements designed to give teams more visibility and control. These include better project insights, edge performance data, more detailed CO2 insights and upcoming hosting recommendations. 

Scheduled upgrades are also planned, giving teams more control over when updates happen. This is a useful step for businesses that need to plan releases and avoid disruption during busy periods. 

The biggest Cloud announcement was load balancing in Umbraco Cloud. For projects that need more performance or resilience, Umbraco Cloud will allow teams to configure multiple instances, with Redis available to support sessions and related functionality. 

This is due to become available from 1 July and is a significant move for larger or higher-traffic websites. It makes Umbraco Cloud more attractive for projects where scalability, resilience and performance are key requirements.

For businesses already using Umbraco, the key message is that the platform is moving quickly but sensibly. 

AI is being introduced with control and governance. Cloud is becoming more scalable and transparent. The CMS is gaining better tools for structured and reusable content. The wider product ecosystem is becoming more joined up. The Marketplace is growing, with more focus needed around trust, support and discoverability. 

For teams considering Umbraco, the message is just as important. Umbraco is positioning itself as a serious, mature alternative to larger enterprise platforms, while keeping the flexibility of open source and the strength of its community. 

And for agencies like Pixelbuilders, it reinforces why Umbraco continues to be such a strong fit for modern websites: it gives us the freedom to build around each client’s needs, with a platform that is becoming more powerful, more reliable and more ready for the future. 

Most importantly, it is still a platform shaped by people. The keynotes made that clear. Whether through MVPs, packages, community teams, hackathons, meetups or client projects, the Umbraco ecosystem continues to grow because people keep contributing to it. 

That is good news for developers, good news for editors and good news for businesses choosing Umbraco as the foundation for their digital platforms.