Our top takeaways from Drupal Jam 2025

Last month, Rodrigo and Aurora from our backend development team headed to the Netherlands for Drupal Jam 2025—and what we found there got us genuinely excited about where Drupal is heading. The conference theme was "and beyond," which turned out to be spot-on for what's coming.

Here are the three big things that caught our attention and why they matter for the work we do.

The star of the show for us was Experience Builder—Drupal's answer to visual page building that's launching at DrupalCon Vienna in October. We got to see a live demo, and honestly, it was impressive.

What makes this different from other page builders? It's built specifically for Drupal, which means you get all the power and flexibility you'd expect, but wrapped up in something that anyone can use. Drag and drop components, real-time previews, and the ability to edit multiple pages at once—all without touching a line of code.

For our partners, this could be a game-changer. Content teams will be able to build sophisticated pages themselves, while developers can focus on the complex stuff. It's the kind of tool that makes Drupal more accessible without dumbing it down.

The other big theme was artificial intelligence, but not in the "AI will solve everything" way you might expect. Instead, we saw practical, thoughtful applications that actually make sense.

The Drupal AI module framework is maturing fast, with real sites already using it for things like automated content translation, SEO optimization, and even citizen service chatbots. What impressed us most was the focus on "human-centric AI"—tools that enhance what people do rather than replace them.

One thing that resonated with our team was hearing other developers talk about the trust-building needed with AI. It's not enough to build something clever; you need to make it reviewable and editable so business teams feel confident using it. That's exactly the approach we've been taking with our own AI prototypes.

On the more technical side, two developments caught our eye:

MongoDB integration offers a compelling solution for sites with thousands of logged-in users. The performance improvements are significant—we're talking about 32% overall performance gains and 75% reduction in query times. For the right projects, this could solve scalability challenges that have been tricky to handle.

Semantic search is evolving too. Instead of exact keyword matching, sites will be able to understand natural language queries. If you've ever tried to find something on a website and couldn't remember the exact terms, you'll appreciate why this matters. The technology is already being integrated into Solr search, which we use on many of our sites.

Drupal Jam 2025 reinforced something we already believed: the platform is evolving in exactly the right direction. It's becoming more user-friendly without losing the enterprise capabilities that make it powerful.

For our partners, these developments mean faster content creation, better user experiences, and sites that can handle more complex requirements. For our team, it means new tools to solve old problems and exciting possibilities for what we can build together. Aurora, one of our backend developers who attended the conference said: “This conference showed me that Drupal keeps improving and impressed me with how rapidly it’s evolving”. 

The enthusiasm at the conference was infectious. Despite the challenges facing any open-source project, the Drupal community is innovating, adapting, and building tools that make the web better. We came back energized and full of ideas for how to use what's coming.