Codegarden 2026

For us at byte5, Codegarden is firmly marked in the calendar. Every year, we look forward to seeing familiar faces again, meeting new people from the Umbraco community, and taking a shared look at where the ecosystem is heading. In 2026, this event took us to Copenhagen. Chris, Toni, and Silvano attended on our behalf and returned with plenty of ideas and impressions.

This year’s Codegarden was particularly special for us. Our .NET developer Silvano was named an Umbraco MVP. This award stands for commitment, expertise, and contribution to the community. That is exactly why it means so much to us. We are proud of Silvano and proud that his work in the Umbraco world is being seen and recognized.

Even before the actual conference began, the week got off to an intense start. At the MVP Summit, Silvano had two long days full of exchange ahead of him. On Monday and Tuesday, around eight hours each day were dedicated to current challenges in projects, packages, and contributing to Umbraco in general. One talk in particular stayed with him: Richard Campbell’s “Above the Cloud: Building Data Centers in Space”. In it, Campbell calculated what it would technically take to bring AI data centers into Earth’s orbit, from solar panel areas and cooling to orbit selection and laser connections. His conclusion, with a wink: it is still a rather unrealistic idea.

And of course, the Codegarden Pre-Party could not be missed. Anyone who has been to Codegarden before knows that these evenings are more than just a relaxed start to the event. People come together, talk in an informal setting about challenges, new ideas, and sometimes simply about life beyond code. It is precisely this mix that makes the community so special.

At the conference itself, artificial intelligence was one of the defining topics. That was not particularly surprising, but it was still exciting to see how concrete many of the discussions have become. The focus was less on abstract visions of the future and more on how new tools can fit sensibly into existing ways of working. For us, what matters is that technology remains helpful, is used in a transparent and understandable way, and supports us in projects where it makes sense.

One talk that stood out in a special way was “How running a DND Campaign can make you a better developer” by Grey Muir. The title sounded unusual, but the idea behind it fit Codegarden wonderfully: good development thrives on communication, an understanding of roles, improvisation, and building stories and solutions together. Sometimes, looking at things from a completely different angle helps us better understand our everyday work.

As every year, the Umbraco Roadmap was a central part of the conference for us. Looking at new products, planned releases, and strategic priorities helps us classify projects in the long term and make well-founded technical decisions. We followed the developments around Umbraco Cloud particularly closely. The announced changes are interesting enough for us to reassess Cloud for upcoming projects.

Umbraco Automate is also an exciting building block. Automating workflows directly in the backoffice while remaining extensible fits many requirements we know from customer projects. At the same time, it became clear that package development continues to gain importance within the Umbraco ecosystem. For a community that has long been shaped by shared knowledge and open extensions, this is a good signal.

Looking ahead, Umbraco 19 also remains exciting. The release of the Standard Term Support version is announced for Q4 2026 and brings further potential around artificial intelligence. For us, that means watching closely and, above all, trying things out. Umbraco 13 will reach end of life in December 2026, which means that no further updates will be provided. The Long Term Support version 17, however, will continue to be supported for quite some time.

We are bringing many impulses back from Copenhagen. Professionally, personally, and as part of an international community that shares openly, stays curious, and supports one another. That is exactly why we keep coming back to Codegarden. And that is exactly why we are already looking forward to the next reunion with the Umbraco community.