Okay, so Europe, right? My first trip was basically a weather flex – like, seriously blessed. But the sun? The sun was on a whole other level. Coming from Kochi, where day and night are basically BFFs and always hang out for the same amount of time, this endless daylight was wild. I'm talking "blindfold needed to trick myself into bed" levels of wild. 😵💫
Anyway, after enough flight delays to earn me a frequent napper badge at every airport lounge, I finally touched down in Copenhagen. It was day one of the MVP Summit, and I was there repping Phases with our CEO, Daniel Horn. It was my first time meeting a bunch of the Umbraco MVPs, and honestly, I'm not always the best at the whole "small talk" thing. But then, like a ray of sunshine (ironic, I know), Lucy Brailsford immediately clocked me, got my MVP badge sorted, and basically rescued me from awkward hovering. Being officially part of this community? Yeah, that felt pretty lit. 🔥
(Okay, okay, I'm just kidding. Let's put the Gen Z slang away now. Unless... you wanna keep it? 👀)
Even though I was still quite tired from the journey, I was excited to head straight into the sessions that were still ongoing.
Day 1: The Umbraco MVP Summit Kicks Off
My Codegarden journey began with the Umbraco MVP Summit. This first-of-its-kind event brought together over 60 Umbraco MVPs with members from Umbraco HQ, and it was a fantastic opportunity for an open exchange of ideas, knowledge, and feedback.
Unfortunately, due to my travel schedule, I arrived early but still missed the very first part of the day's events and the initial lunch. However, the remainder of Day 1 at the MVP Summit was packed with insightful round table discussions that I was able to join. I particularly enjoyed diving into topics like:
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AI Integrations and Innovation: Exploring current AI solutions within the Umbraco ecosystem and discussing sustainable ways to leverage AI for both developers and content editors.
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Bellisima Backoffice Development, Extensions, and Architecture: Gaining deeper insights into the new backoffice capabilities.
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Version Migration and Adoption Barriers: Understanding common challenges and solutions for upgrading Umbraco instances.
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What Features Are Missing in Umbraco: A valuable session where direct feedback could be provided, and it was great to see how receptive the Umbraco team was to community input.
Day 2: MVP Summit Continues, Business Summit & Web Hacking
On the second day of the MVP Summit, the discussions continued, running concurrently with the Umbraco Business Summit, an exclusive event for Umbraco Partners and Enterprise Customers. While our CEO Daniel Horn attended the Business Summit to gain insights into Umbraco case studies, future strategies, and new features like Umbraco Compose, I opted for a hands-on experience that truly captured my interest.
I got into the "Web Hacking 101" workshop, which combined a bit of pentesting with playing around in Kali Linux. This was a unique and incredibly engaging session, offering practical insights into web application security from an offensive perspective. It was fascinating to delve into the tactics and tools used by attackers, and it provided a valuable understanding of how to better secure Umbraco applications.
The Main Event: Three Days of Codegarden
Following the MVP and Business Summits, the main Codegarden conference kicked off for three full days. This marked the 20th anniversary of this annual week-long event in Odense, Denmark. It was fantastic to be there in person, joining over 600 attendees and 650 online participants from across the globe. The energy was palpable, and it truly felt like Umbraco is embarking on an exciting new phase.
Keynote Highlights: A Glimpse into Umbraco's Roadmap
The main conference kicked off with a compelling keynote that clearly outlined what's on the immediate horizon and what's still in the works. We saw live demos of block-level variation and the new Tiptap rich-text editor within a much cleaner backoffice. It was exciting to see confirmation that features like real-time collaboration, reusable content blocks, a new search abstraction, and official Docker images are all in active development.
A major announcement was the forthcoming Umbraco MCP Server, which will provide AI tools with a standardized way to interact with Umbraco. We also heard about meaningful upgrades planned for familiar add-ons such as Engage, Workflow, Forms, Deploy, and UI Builder.
Platform improvements were a significant focus, with details on the path to full load balancing and a preview of Umbraco Compose. This orchestration layer promises to unify the CMS with other composable DXP products via a single GraphQL endpoint. It was evident that every roadmap item, from Docker support to the search revamp, is being shaped in close collaboration with the community – a testament to Umbraco's commitment to its users.
A Personal Highlight: The Umbraco MVP Award
One of the most unforgettable moments of Codegarden was being officially recognized as an Umbraco MVP. It was an incredible honor to stand on stage alongside the other 26 new MVPs from around the world, celebrating our contributions to this vibrant community. This award is a testament to the collective effort and passion that drives the Umbraco ecosystem forward, and I felt immense pride being part of such a dedicated group.
Deep Dives and Myth Busting: Sessions That Stood Out
The sessions throughout Codegarden 2025 offered a wealth of knowledge. Here are a few that particularly resonated with me:
Umbraco CMS: Releases, Realities, and Rewriting the Umbraco Lore
This session was a rapid-fire myth-busting experience. It was fascinating to see long-standing beliefs about the CMS challenged and new realities revealed. Many assumptions were overturned, like the news that search is being rebuilt to move away from Examine, and the rich-text editor has transitioned from TinyMCE to Tiptap. What was particularly rewarding was hearing some of the ideas I raised at the MVP Summit, like visual editors and exploration of virtual members, called out on stage – it truly shows the team is listening!
Better Together: Umbraco Cloud Shaped by HQ and the Umbraco Community
This session provided a comprehensive update on Umbraco Cloud, highlighting recent shipments like external login provider connections and more generous cloud bandwidth calculations. The Flexible Environments feature, allowing teams to spin up short-lived review branches, seems incredibly useful. Looking ahead, the promise of full load balancing and a portal screen for configuring WAF rules directly addresses recurring customer requests, demonstrating that Cloud's roadmap is evolving directly from real-world needs.
Umbraco Compose - Orchestrate it all
This was one of my favorite sessions! It introduced Umbraco Compose, an innovative orchestration layer designed to be a backend-for-frontend in composable architectures. The ability to unify content from Umbraco with data from third-party systems like commerce platforms via a single GraphQL endpoint is a game-changer. What truly sets Compose apart is its new property editor, allowing editors to browse and select external content as if it were native to Umbraco. This transforms Umbraco into a central hub within a modern, flexible DXP setup, showcasing its immense potential.
Next-Level Backoffice
This session brilliantly demonstrated how Umbraco 16 empowers developers to tailor the editor experience. From custom dashboards offering task-focused actions to the ability to override default actions for specific nodes, the control developers now have is impressive. The example of a custom property editor reusing the built-in Umbraco.Plain.Json schema for address data, coupled with advanced validation and property-level permissions, showcased how much flexibility exists while maintaining an upgrade-friendly architecture.
The Future of (Umbraco) Search
This session unveiled a new abstraction layer for search, decoupling it from Examine. The goal is a more flexible and extensible foundation supporting full-text search, filtering, multilingual content, and more. Seeing demos of both an in-memory search provider and an Elasticsearch provider working seamlessly without Examine was exciting. This open-sourced initiative promises smarter, provider-agnostic search that will evolve with project needs.
From Clicks to Commands: AI for Editors, Developers, and Everyone Else
Phil Whittaker and Matthew Wise delivered an insightful presentation on the new Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Umbraco. This innovation allows AI agents to directly interact with Umbraco's Management API, streamlining tasks that usually require tedious manual work. The demonstrations, including updating SEO property descriptions and exporting blogs, highlighted the incredible potential of integrating Umbraco MCP with tools like Claude. This is an exciting AI feature that I'm keen to explore further for client projects.
Beyond the Talks: Community, Hackathon, and Connection
Codegarden isn't just about the talks; it's also about the vibrant community. The annual Umbraco Awards celebrated incredible contributions and achievements, and it was inspiring to see the recognition given to package developers and community members.
Of course, no Codegarden is complete without the traditional Umbraco Bingo event! This unique and fun game, with its quirky Umbraco-branded prizes, was a fantastic way to end day two, fostering a sense of camaraderie and lightheartedness.
A Memorable Boat Ride
One of the most enjoyable social moments was the boat ride. Even though it was a relatively small boat, the atmosphere was fantastic because of the people on board. I joined my fellow MVPs, and it was a real blast! It's moments like these, connecting and having fun with the community, that truly make Codegarden special.
On the final day, it was great to have the option to attend more insightful talks or participate in the exhilarating hackathon. This provided a fantastic opportunity to collaborate, apply new knowledge, and contribute directly to the Umbraco ecosystem.
Final Reflections
Codegarden 2025 was a resounding success. It was a true pleasure to spend high-quality time with colleagues, learning new things, exchanging ideas, and simply having fun. A massive thank you goes out to Umbraco HQ, their business partners, all the incredible speakers, and the entire Umbraco Community for making this "super geeky and fun tech conference" happen. Here's to many more to come!
#H5YR
And remember, while they might want us to believe Umbraco is not a cult... at least we get cool badges and boat rides! JK!! HAHA 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Image Credits: All images in this post are courtesy of Umbraco HQ.
