Umbraco Codegarden is the biggest Umbraco conference in the world, an annual celebration of all things Umbraco, the fantastic things people can do and make with it, serving to inform and inspire.
It’s an annual week-long event that takes place in Odense, Denmark. This year I celebrated the 20th anniversary of Codegarden in person with manifesto CTO John Ennew, Principal Engineer Lee Mills, and Lead Engineer Richard Howell, with over 600 joining in person and 650 online from all over the world.
Hitting the ground running and the Umbraco MVP Summit
Umbraco MVP Summit was the first event of its kind from Umbraco that brought more than 60 Umbraco MVPs together with members from Umbraco HQ’s product, engineering, and DevRel teams to share ideas, knowledge, plans, and feedback.
We kicked off the MVP summit with a couple of Umbraco HQ talks, including a wonderful presentation by Matt Brailsford about “How to Create a Neurodivergent Friendly Workplace”.
In his talk, Matt shared his personal experience with neurodivergence after being diagnosed last year. He provided practical tips for fostering a workplace that is supportive of neurodivergent individuals. These tips included allowing flexible work arrangements, such as working from home or in an office environment, starting work at times that suit both employees and their teams, and arranging workspaces to meet the specific needs of neurodivergent people. I am pleased to say at manifesto we already have practices highlighted in Matt’s talk in place to create a friendly workplace
The rest of the day was mostly two tracks of round table discussions including:
- AI integrations and innovation
- Bellisima Backoffice development, extensions, and architecture
- Version migration and adoption barriers
- What features are missing in Umbraco
It was extremely beneficial to examine the current AI solutions available for the Umbraco ecosystem. We discussed the best ways to use AI within Umbraco to empower both developers and content editors, ultimately enhancing overall productivity while prioritising sustainability in these features.
Umbraco Business Summit
I started the second day of Codegarden week by participating in the annual cycling event.
After the social ride, we had an exclusive event for Umbraco Partners and Enterprise Customers called the Umbraco Business Summit. This event was an excellent starting point for Codegarden. I joined John Ennew to meet key figures from Umbraco HQ and the Umbraco Community. There were several talks covering Umbraco case studies, the future of Umbraco, expert advice on strategies for the future, and new features, including Umbraco Compose.
Codegarden Conference: Highlights from Day 1
During this year's conference, our team had three different tracks of talks for most of the time. Since all the presentations were excellent, we divided our time to attend as many sessions as we could.
Umbraco Keynote
Mats Persson, Emma Burstow, Filip Bech-Larsen, and Bjarke Berg from Umbraco HQ talked about some exciting features, such as:
- A powerful new step in Umbraco’s AI journey: The Umbraco MCP Server
- Umbraco Compose: a new Umbraco orchestration platform for composable architecture
- Umbraco Cloud flexible environments and new load balancing feature for Umbraco Cloud
- Umbraco Engage features and a plan to migrate it to the new backoffice in Q3
Migrating 70 brand sites using Umbraco Cloud, focusing on editor experience and client empowerment
This was a good technical talk about how to create “similar” Umbraco Cloud projects within a short timeframe, using a custom “launchpad” and front-end styles, DevOps interface, effectively, allowing their client to launch new websites, independent from the agency’s available resources.
Delivering enterprise commerce simply: bringing multiple brands under one roof
Matt Sutherland delivered an insightful presentation about a case study with an enterprise client. He discussed how they integrated several separate platforms that served different user groups into a single cohesive platform. Matt detailed their architectural approach using a headless Umbraco Cloud CMS to deliver content, along with Umbraco Commerce, which simplifies the management of complex products, along with various third-party integrations, such as Algolia search, an AI-powered commerce recommender for web users.
It’s the journey that sells: Engage & Commerce in action
Corne Hoskam, one of the creators of Umbraco Engage demonstrated how to use Umbraco Engage analytics data to map the customer journey and use personalisation to boost sales and build loyalty.
Umbraco Awards
Closing the day was the annual Umbraco Awards 7 different categories, as well as the package awards. Congratulations to all winners for their contributions and fantastic achievements.
Codegarden Conference: Highlights from Day 2
Next-level backoffice
The new Umbraco backoffice, namely Bellisima, has replaced the legacy technology of AngularJS with the modern technologies of Web Components, Lit, and TypeScript. Niels Lyngso talked about the customisation options, new extension points, and how to create tailored solutions within the new backoffice for clients.
Is ChatGPT killing the penguins? And other AI considerations
A fun AI talk by James Hobbs about the significant energy requirements of Generative AI, tools, and approaches to help us make the best use of this exciting technology. Some of the insights included:
- We can't rely solely on consumers, companies, or legislation for a sustainable future with AI solutions.
- The concern lies not with large language models (LLMs) themselves, but with their usage. It's crucial to consider the hidden costs of AI technologies.
- Even small behavioural changes globally can create a significant impact.
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, which allows AI agents to interact directly with Umbraco’s Management API. This innovation streamlines tasks that usually require tedious manual work by developers and content editors.
They demonstrated how to integrate the Umbraco MCP with Claude, making automation accessible without extensive AI expertise.
Key automated tasks included:
- Updating the “SEO Composition” property descriptions with the latest recommendations.
- Exporting existing blogs from Umbraco to the filesystem while maintaining their current structure.
- Identifying unused Document Types and moving them into a new "Unused" folder in the Settings section.
This is an exciting new AI feature that we will continue to explore for our client projects.
Unboxing Umbraco Commerce: From content to cart, or how to transform an Umbraco website into a store
Umbraco Commerce offers a powerful platform for our clients, particularly charities and membership organisations. It provides essential tools for membership management, order management, data analytics, and third-party integrations with popular payment providers. Additionally, it includes features for discounts and rewards, online donations, and event registration, all within a flexible and customisable environment.
This practical talk demonstrated the easy integration of Umbraco Commerce with an Umbraco website, including code samples for common features such as the shopping cart and discounts.
Bridging the gap. Design to development.
Peter Gregory delivered an insightful talk on how visual design tools, such as Figma, headless Umbraco, modern JavaScript frameworks like NextJS, and Plasmic CMS, can foster close collaboration between designers and developers. He highlighted how these tools can create new opportunities for cross-functional teams, allowing designers to easily update content on the front-end website simply by making changes in Figma.
Umbraco Bingo and the final day
At the end of day 2, we headed to the main stage for the special, traditional Umbraco Bingo event. It’s a unique event like no other, where a fun, unconventional bingo game is played and attendees can win quirky, Umbraco-branded prizes.
On the final day of the event, you could attend more talks or join hands-on workshops.
Some final thoughts
Codegarden 2025 was a great success, and it was such a pleasure to be there with my colleagues John Ennew, Lee Mills, and Richard Howell. We spent high-quality time together while learning new things, exchanging ideas, and having fun.
Big thanks to Umbraco, their business partners, speakers, and the Umbraco Community for making this super geeky and fun tech conference happen. Here is to many more to come! #h5yr