What to Watch for at DrupalCon Chicago 2026

I’ll be honest: I’m a little jealous of everyone heading to Chicago next week for DrupalCon. I’ve attended in the past, and it’s one of those events where the energy of the community is palpable and the hallway conversations are as valuable as the keynotes. This year, I won’t be there in person, but I’ll be following closely because this DrupalCon might be the most important one in years.

Here’s what I’d be paying the most attention to.

Drupal CMS: The Rebrand That’s Really a Reinvention

If you haven’t been tracking what’s happened with Drupal CMS, you’re going to hear a lot about it at DrupalCon. This isn’t a minor version bump. Drupal CMS represents a fundamental rethinking of how Drupal presents itself to the market, and more importantly, how it feels to use.

The installation experience has been rebuilt. The default configuration is opinionated and useful out of the box. The visual building tools are sophisticated enough that non-technical users can create real pages without developer help. And all of this sits on top of the same enterprise-grade architecture that powers the most complex Drupal sites in the world.

If there’s one session I’d prioritize, it’s anything covering the Drupal CMS vision and roadmap. The ambition here is significant.

Drupal Canvas AI: The “AI Is the New UI” Moment

Canvas AI is Drupal’s AI-powered page builder, and I think it’s going to be one of the most-discussed features at the conference. You describe a page in natural language: “a pricing page with three tiers, a comparison table, and a FAQ section” and Canvas generates a complete, designed layout using your site’s component library.

What makes this more than a gimmick is that it works with structured content. The AI isn’t guessing at layout. It’s working with your defined components, your design system, your content model. The result is something your team can actually publish, not a rough draft that needs to be rebuilt.

Dries Buytaert has been calling this moment “AI is the new UI,” and I think he’s right. Canvas AI is the clearest example of how AI can make a powerful platform genuinely accessible to more people.

Drupal AI: 22 Agents, 48+ Providers, and the MCP Advantage

The Drupal AI Initiative has been moving fast. As of right now, Drupal CMS ships 22 AI agents out of the box, supports 48+ AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure, and AWS Bedrock, and has native Model Context Protocol support.

That last one, MCP, is worth paying attention to at DrupalCon. Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI agents like Claude, Cursor, and Copilot connect to and operate a Drupal site directly. It’s what makes Drupal not just AI-enabled but AI-operable. External agents can discover your content model, understand the schema, and take actions within your defined permissions.

I’d look for sessions on the Drupal AI roadmap, MCP integration patterns, and real-world case studies from sites already running these tools in production. The $1.5 million community investment in AI is showing tangible results.

The Structured Content Story

If there’s a theme that ties everything together at this DrupalCon, I think it’s this: Drupal’s decade-long investment in structured content is paying off in ways nobody predicted.

Structured content modeling with distinct entity types, typed fields, taxonomies, and relationships was originally designed for enterprise-grade content management. It made Drupal powerful but also complex. The learning curve was real.

Now, that same structure is exactly what AI agents need to work accurately and safely. AI automators can generate and tag content at the field level because the fields exist. The admin chatbot can answer site-specific questions because the content model is introspectable. RAG integration can ground AI in verified content because the content is organized, typed, and API-accessible.

Other platforms are trying to retrofit this. Drupal has had it for years.

What I’m Watching From Afar

A few other things I’ll be following from my non-attendee perch:

The DriesNote: Dries Buytaert’s keynote is always the highlight. His recent posts on why Drupal is built for the AI era and the great digital agency unbundling suggest he’ll be connecting Drupal’s AI capabilities to the bigger picture of how agencies and enterprises are evolving. I expect some significant announcements.

Community momentum: The Drupal AI Initiative has real funding and real contributors. I’m curious to see how many new AI modules and integrations get announced at the conference. The pace of innovation in this community has been remarkable.

Customer stories: With 11,000+ sites running Drupal AI modules, there should be compelling case studies from teams using these tools in production. Those real-world stories are what move the conversation from “that’s interesting” to “we should do this.”

If You’re Going: Enjoy Chicago for Me

DrupalCon Chicago is going to be one of those conferences where the narrative shifts. Drupal has been doing the hard architectural work for years, and this is the moment where the payoff becomes visible to everyone — not just the people who’ve been paying close attention.

If you’re attending, soak it in. Talk to the people building the AI modules. See Canvas AI in person. Ask hard questions about governance and permissions and what happens when you let AI agents loose on enterprise content.

And if you’re not there, like me, watch the keynotes, follow the hashtags, and don’t sleep on what’s coming. The Drupal of 2026 is not the Drupal you remember. It’s better.