Come for the code, stay for the community.
Drupal is an open-source platform for building and running content-driven websites, from small sites to large enterprise systems. It was first released in 2001. Drupal CMS is a newer, ready-to-use product built on top of Drupal, first released in January 2025. This article covers what Drupal is, what is new, and how to run it.
Nico Grienauer and Sinduri Guntupalli presented this introduction to Drupal and Drupal CMS, and this article follows the talk.
What is Drupal?
Drupal is both a development framework and a content management system.
What makes the code good:
- Modern PHP foundations. Built on Symfony components (such as HttpFoundation, EventDispatcher, and DependencyInjection), with Composer for dependencies and Twig for templating. Extended through entity, plugin, and hook APIs.
- Structured and API-first. Content is modeled as typed fields, defined once and reused. JSON:API and REST expose that content to decoupled and headless front ends.
- Free and open source. GPL-licensed, no licence fees. Open source since 2001, governed by the non-profit Drupal Association (formed in 2006).
It also comes with an intuitive content management experience:
- Content authors create and publish content and manage media, menus, and users through the admin interface, no code required.
- Media management, revision history, and content moderation are built into core.
Drupal core vs Drupal CMS
- Core is the framework. You assemble the site and select its modules yourself.
- Drupal CMS is a product. It ships with curated modules, configuration, and starter content already set up.
- It is not an old-style distribution, and there is no lock-in. Underneath, it is standard Drupal and stays fully upgradeable.
- As the project puts it: core provides the framework, Drupal CMS provides the product.
What you get out of the box
Available on a fresh Drupal CMS install, with no extra setup:
- Recipes apply a whole feature, with its modules and configuration, in one step.
- Project Browser finds and installs modules from the admin UI.
- Automatic Updates apply security and maintenance updates from within Drupal.
- SEO, analytics, cookie and consent handling, and a media library.
- Role-based permissions, plus DDEV and an AGENTS.md file for local development and AI tools.
Core strengths
- Multilingual is in core: more than 100 languages, with translation workflows.
- Security is managed by a dedicated team following a coordinated disclosure process.
- Accessibility targets WCAG conformance by default.
- Performance: built-in caching, with a 26 to 33 percent throughput gain in core 11.3.
- Structured content: typed fields defined once and reused across the site.
- Configuration in code: settings export to YAML for version control and clean deploys.
- API-first: JSON:API and REST for decoupled and headless front ends.
What is new in Drupal CMS
Two releases shipped one year apart.
Drupal CMS 1.0 (January 2025)
- Released on Drupal’s 24th birthday. Built in about eight months by more than 300 contributors.
- A proof of concept. Introduced recipes, early AI agents, and preconfigured defaults.
Drupal CMS 2.0 (January 2026)
- Released during the week of Drupal’s 25th birthday.
- Drupal Canvas, a visual page builder, is now the default editor. Editing happens directly on the live page, with no separate preview step. It builds on Layout Builder and Paragraphs, and assembles pages from reusable Single-Directory Components.
- Site templates install a complete, designed site for a use case (for example Byte for B2B SaaS, Mercury for libraries, Haven for nonprofits) instead of a blank page.
- An AI Dashboard drafts and refines content.
- Core 11.3 improved throughput by 26 to 33 percent.
- Version 2.1 added one-command configuration export and premium templates.
AI, built in the open
- The AI features are developed in the open and governed by the community, not as a separate proprietary layer.
- AI page building runs inside Canvas: describe a page, and agents assemble it.
- A Context Control Center defines brand voice, audiences, and the rules the AI must follow.
- AI output is reviewed by a person before publication.
- Every new project includes an AGENTS.md file, and there is MCP support, including for Claude.
Who uses Drupal
- Government, higher education, and nonprofits are long-standing strongholds.
- Examples: the Australian Government’s GovCMS, the European Commission, Stanford, Yale, UNDP, and WWF.
- Enterprises and brands include Pfizer and Nokia.
- In music and entertainment, Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, The Beatles, and the Oscars run on Drupal.
- Per the 2025 Impact Report, more than 1 million sites run on Drupal worldwide.
By the numbers (2026)
- More than 1.39 million registered community members; about 124,000 active contributors.
- More than 50,000 contributed modules; 100 plus languages in core.
- Roughly 3.5 billion dollars of Drupal work per year through the certified partner ecosystem.
- 4.91 million dollars in funding into Drupal through the Association in 2025.
What is next
- Core ships a minor release roughly every six months.
- Drupal 11.4 (June 2026): PHP attribute routing, faster bootstrap, Brotli compression.
- A template marketplace is planned around DrupalCon Rotterdam (28 September to 1 October 2026).
- Drupal 10 reaches end of life on 9 December 2026. Move to Drupal 11.
- Upgrades between versions are incremental, not full rebuilds.
Try it yourself
- In the browser: drupalforge.org provides a free, preconfigured trial site in seconds, with no install.
- Locally with DDEV: follow the DDEV quickstart, then run
ddev composer create-project drupal/recommended-projectandddev launch. - Launcher app: the desktop installer runs Drupal locally with no command line.
Resources
Learn
Watch
Community and contribute
Drupal Austria
Slides from the talk
The full slide deck is attached below.
Intro_to_Drupal_June_2026.pdf (3.2 MB)
