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The full programme for Drupal Developer Days 2026 shows how the Drupal ecosystem is responding to major shifts in modern web development. Artificial intelligence features prominently across multiple sessions, alongside discussions about Drupal CMS architecture, developer tooling, and evolving community practices. Together, the sessions suggest a community exploring how Drupal adapts to AI-assisted development while continuing to modernise its technical foundations.

Hot on the heels of beta 2, we are happy to announce the release of Display Builder 1.0.0-beta3! This new release focuses on stability, with a solid round of bug fixes, but also ships meaningful new features.

Join Us for Drupal Mountain Camp 2027 admin Fri, 03/06/2026 - 13:09

We are happy to announce that Drupal Mountain Camp is coming back for its 6th edition on March 2-4, 2027, in Davos, Switzerland.

Since 2017, we have been gathering at Davos Congress in the Swiss Alps for sessions, workshops, and contribution sprints that bring the Drupal community together. Developers, designers, project managers, agency leaders, and anyone passionate about open source - everyone has a place here.

The venue offers professional conference infrastructure, reliable connectivity, and an inspiring alpine setting. Davos is a 2-hour scenic train ride from Zurich airport through the Swiss Alps.

As with every edition, Drupal Mountain Camp is more than a conference. Expect skiing, snowboarding, fondue in the mountains, and social activities that bring the community closer together.

Calls for speakers and sponsors will be announced as planning progresses.

Stay up to date and plan ahead:

• Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates
• Follow us on Mastodon, Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkedIn 
• Plan your journey with our Sustainable Travel Guide to Davos

We look forward to seeing you in Davos.

When people face urgent legal questions, finding trustworthy information quickly matters.

Recently, Electric Citizen partnered with LawHelpMN.org to help launch a new landing page that gathers key immigration resources in one place: www.lawhelpmn.org/immigration-legal-help

The page was created in response to Operation Metro Surge, a controversial immigration enforcement effort that has created significant disruption and uncertainty for many Minnesota communities. The goal was to provide a clear starting point where people can quickly understand their rights and find trusted legal help.

Accelerating Drupal Core development

A LinkedIn post (by Jay Callicott) made the case that Drupal core development needs to accelerate to meet modern (AI-driven) expectations, and adopting AI-DLC is the way to get there. 

"Hot take [..] Drupal Core team needs to adopt AI-DLC [..] (as defined by AWS). AI does the code writing you are doing the orchestration. Who is with me??"

Increasing the velocity of evolving Drupal is a valid and worthwhile goal. The community had already identified the speed of Drupal Core development as an issue. Their solution was to move more quickly outside of Drupal core, in a (non-core) version of Drupal named "Drupal CMS".

ashrafabed Thu, 03/05/2026

DrupalCon Chicago is going to be huge for Dripyard! We have one training, three presentations, one site template session, 400 stickers, and a very limited supply of beanies to give away!

The DropTimes contacted Drupal contributor Mike Herchel ahead of DrupalCon Chicago to discuss the sessions he will present during the conference week. His responses outline a full-day training on modern Drupal theming, a session on contributing to Drupal projects with Matt Glaman, and participation in a keynote highlighting ongoing work around Drupal CMS and the ecosystem emerging around it.

Implementing accessibility best practices on your Drupal website and taking care of search engine optimization may seem like separate priorities. In reality, they are more closely intertwined than you might expect.

DDEV v1.25.1 introduced validation that checks for Docker Buildx, and you may encounter an error when running ddev start if your system isn't configured correctly. This post explains why this dependency exists, who's affected, and how to resolve it. Note that DDEV v1.25.2 will bundle a private Docker Buildx to eliminate this configuration requirement.

Table of Contents Who's Affected

Most users won't need to do anything. Docker Desktop, OrbStack, and Rancher Desktop bundle Docker Buildx automatically.

You may need to take action if you're using:

• macOS with Lima or Colima - requires manual installation via Homebrew
• Ubuntu or Debian with Docker from Ubuntu/Debian repositories instead of Docker's repositories - older versions don't meet requirements
• NixOS - requires package update

If you're running Docker Desktop, OrbStack, or Rancher Desktop, you can skip this article.

The Error

When running ddev start on DDEV v1.25.1 without a compatible Buildx version, you'll see:

$ ddev start Docker buildx check failed: compose build requires buildx 0.17.0 or later: docker CLI plugin "buildx" not found. Please install buildx: https://github.com/docker/buildx#installing

Or if Buildx is installed but doesn't match the required version:

$ ddev start Docker buildx check failed: compose build requires buildx 0.17.0 or later. Installed docker buildx: 0.13.1 (plugin path: /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx) Please update buildx: https://github.com/docker/buildx#installing Why This Requirement Exists

This is an upstream dependency from Docker Compose, not a DDEV-specific choice.

Here's how we got here:

1. Docker Compose v2.37.0 (released June 2025) made the bake builder the default build backend
2. Docker Compose v2.40.2 (released October 2025) introduced a minimum version requirement for Docker Buildx (≥0.17.0)
3. DDEV v1.24.8 (released September 2025) updated to Docker Compose v2.39.3, which uses the bake builder by default
4. DDEV v1.25.1 (released February 2026) added validation to catch this configuration issue early and provide clear guidance

The requirement comes from Docker Compose itself. DDEV now validates your system configuration to prevent confusing build failures.

Solutions by Platform macOS with Lima or Colima (or if you have this problem for any reason)

Install Docker Buildx via Homebrew:

brew install docker-buildx

After installation, configure Docker to find the plugin. Add cliPluginsExtraDirs to $HOME/.docker/config.json:

{ "cliPluginsExtraDirs": ["/opt/homebrew/lib/docker/cli-plugins"] }

You can see this information anytime with:

brew info docker-buildx

The post-install messages from Homebrew will show you the exact path for your system.

Debian

Debian 13 (Trixie) includes Docker Buildx v0.13.1 from the Debian repositories, which doesn't meet the ≥0.17.0 requirement.

Solution: Switch to Docker from the official Docker repositories.

1. Backup your DDEV projects with ddev snapshot -a.
2. Uninstall Docker packages from Debian repositories
3. Follow the Docker installation instructions in our documentation

The official Docker repositories provide current versions of all Docker components including Docker Buildx ≥0.17.0.

NixOS

NixOS users should track DDEV issue #8183. A NixOS patch is available - once merged, you'll get the fix through normal system updates without manual intervention.

Generic Solution

If the platform-specific solutions above don't work, you can manually place the docker-buildx binary in one of Docker's expected plugin directories:

Linux/macOS:

• $HOME/.docker/cli-plugins/
• /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins/
• /usr/local/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/
• /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins/
• /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/

Traditional Windows (not needed for WSL2):

• %USERPROFILE%\.docker\cli-plugins\
• %ProgramFiles%\Docker\cli-plugins\

See Docker's plugin manager source for Linux/macOS and Windows for the complete list.

Alternatively, place the binary anywhere and configure Docker to find it by adding cliPluginsExtraDirs to $HOME/.docker/config.json (or %USERPROFILE%\.docker\config.json on Windows):

{ "cliPluginsExtraDirs": ["/path/to/your/custom/plugin/directory"] } What's Next for DDEV

We're working to make this smoother in upcoming releases:

DDEV v1.25.2 (upcoming) will likely bundle a private Docker Buildx that DDEV uses exclusively. This eliminates the system configuration requirement for most users. I'm working on this in PR #8198.

Future releases will transition from our private Docker Compose binary to the Docker Compose SDK. This gives DDEV more control over upstream dependencies and reduces configuration complexity.

Need Help?

If you're still seeing issues after following these steps, reach out in any of the support channels.

This article was edited and refined with assistance from Claude Code.

Build beautiful Drupal page layouts without writing a line of TWIG and CSSIf you've ever wished Drupal's block-based layout system came with a more visual, component-driven experience, the new Display Builder module is exactly what you've been waiting for.In this first video of the Display Builder series, Pierre walks through the Page Layouts feature, showing how fast you can build a fully styled, published page layout — no custom code required.

Take Away

At Tag1, we believe in proving AI within our own work before recommending it to clients. This post is part of our AI Applied content series, where team members share real stories of how they're using AI and the insights and lessons they learn along the way. Here, Sammy Gituko, Software Developer, explores how AI supported improvements to the Metatag module by speeding up the discovery, verification, and replacement of broken documentation links across 30+ plugin files from hours to minutes.

A Small Fix That Wasn’t So Simple

My first contribution to the Drupal Metatag module started with what looked like a simple issue: fixing broken external documentation links. The task was logged as Issue #3559765 Fix broken links in the Meta tags section , and at first, it seemed like a quick cleanup job. But the deeper I looked, the more it revealed about the fragility of open source documentation, and how AI can speed up the repetitive parts of technical contribution work while still requiring careful human judgment.

Broken links may not sound exciting, but they highlight a widespread challenge in open source maintenance. Documentation links age fast. Websites vanish. URL structures change without warning. And because the Metatag module contains dozens of plugin files pointing to different sources, even a small fix meant a lot of detail work.

How AI Accelerated the Research Phase

To begin, I scanned the src/Plugin/metatag/Tag/ directory, which contains over 30 plugin files. This was where AI added real value, not by writing code, but by making the background research faster and more structured. I found six that had broken or unreliable links:

• SetCookie.php: Link to metatags.org was returning 404
• Rating.php: Link to metatags.org was broken, though the RTA link worked
• Google.php: Google webmasters link returned 404
• Expires.php: Link to csgnetwork.com calculator had connection errors
• Standout.php: Google News documentation was broken (404)
• NewsKeywords.php: Google News documentation was broken (404)

For each broken link, I needed to verify the issue, find a reliable replacement from an authoritative source, confirm it worked and was stable, then update it in the code without disrupting formatting or introducing linting errors.

Finding Every Link

Checking each file manually would have been tedious. Using AI, I generated efficient grep patterns for discovering URLs across the whole directory, like this suggestion that matched multiple URL styles: https?://|www\. That one line let me identify every external link across 30+ plugin files in minutes.

Verifying What Was Broken

The next challenge was figuring out which links actually worked. Instead of opening them one by one, AI recommended using a simple curl command to automatically test HTTP status codes:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" "https://example.com"

This approach let me quickly categorize links as 200 (working), 404 (broken), or 301 (redirects), giving me a precise list of which needed attention.

Finding Better Sources

When replacing links, AI helped search for credible alternatives, suggesting sources like MDN, W3C, IETF, or Google Search Central. It also helped compare multiple options and recommend the best one.

When AI Needed a Human Touch

Despite its efficiency, AI couldn’t make every decision. Some choices depended on contextual understanding, deciding whether a replacement even made sense.

Google News Documentation

Two plugin files, Standout.php and NewsKeywords.php, both referenced Google News documentation that no longer existed. AI surfaced generic help pages, but none were relevant. Since the tags were already marked @deprecated, I chose to remove the links entirely. This was a judgment call informed by understanding the code’s context and the importance of avoiding misleading or obsolete references.

Content Rating (RTA) Documentation

In Rating.php, the existing RTA link technically worked but wasn’t reader-friendly. The AI proposed a few options, but ultimately, I picked Wikipedia’s page on content rating systems. It included the RTA standard, offered better context, and felt more accessible, a human decision about user experience, not just URL accuracy.

What This Taught Me

Several clear themes came out of this contribution:

• Third-party documentation is fragile. Even long-established sources like metatags.org and csgnetwork.com can disappear or restructure, breaking countless references.
• Redirects can cause silent problems. A 301 redirect still “works,” but introduces slower load times and unnecessary chains. Direct links are cleaner.
• AI excels at repetitive verification. Checking and verifying dozens of URLs took minutes instead of hours.
• Context remains human. AI found replacements but couldn’t know when removing links made more sense or why accessibility might matter more than originality.
• Authoritative sources reduce maintenance. Linking to MDN, IETF, or W3C means fewer headaches for future maintainers and reviewers.

The Outcome

The final patch replaced or removed all broken documentation links:

Fixed with authoritative replacements:

• SetCookie: MDN documentation
• Google: Google Search Central
• Expires: IETF RFC 1123
• Rating: Wikipedia

Removed (no suitable or relevant replacements):

• Standout : Google News documentation removed
• NewsKeywords: Google News documentation removed

The workflow became smoother, faster, and easier to reproduce. Using AI to handle repetitive validation tasks allowed me to focus my attention on decisions that actually required human reasoning.

A Better Way Forward

This contribution showed how AI can accelerate contribution workflows without replacing the thoughtful judgment that open source development depends on. By blending AI-assisted discovery with context-aware decision-making, contributors can move faster and still produce work that’s accurate, accessible, and maintainable.

Maintaining external documentation links might never be glamorous, but it’s a perfect example of how AI can make quality improvements faster and more sustainable, one verified link at a time.

This post is part of Tag1’s AI Applied content series, where we share how we're using AI inside our own work before bringing it to clients. Our goal is to be transparent about what works, what doesn’t, and what we are still figuring out, so that together, we can build a more practical, responsible path for AI adoption.

Bring practical, proven AI adoption strategies to your organization, let's start a conversation! We'd love to hear from you.

There is a big party happening at DrupalCon Chicago, and I can't wait.

On March 24th, we're celebrating Drupal's 25th Anniversary with a gala from 7–10 pm CT. It's a separate ticketed event, not included in your DrupalCon registration.

Some of Drupal's earliest contributors are coming back for this, including a few who haven't attended DrupalCon in years. That alone makes it special.

If you've been part of Drupal's story, whether for decades or just a few months, I'd love for you to be there. It's shaping up to be a memorable night.

The dress code is "Drupal Fancy". That means anything from gowns and black tie, to your favorite Drupal t-shirt. If you've ever wanted an excuse to dress up for a Drupal event, this is it!

Tickets are $125, with a limited number of $25 tickets underwritten by sponsors so cost isn't a barrier. All tickets must be purchased in advance. They won't be available at the door. Registration closes March 18th, so grab your tickets soon.

Organizations can reserve a table for their team. Even better, invite a few contributors to join you. It's a great way to give back to the people who helped build what your business runs on.

For questions or sponsorship opportunities, please reach out to Tiffany Farriss, who is serving as Gala Chair and part of the team coordinating the celebration.

Know someone who should be there? Share this with them.

What matters most is that you're there. I can't wait to celebrate together in Chicago.

A new alpha experimental "Admin" theme just landed in Drupal 12 dev (and 11 dev) which is a merge of the Claro and Gin themes. Gin historically extended Claro which caused complications on both sides. The merged theme allows to iron out things much faster and more effectively without duplication of efforts in two themes. Going forward the plan is for "Admin" to replace Claro. Until "Admin" becomes stable, Claro will remain the default admin experience. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3556948

The 0.7.0 release was housekeeping — fixing the release notes command and clearing out deprecation warnings. 0.8.0 has two goals: add native GitLab issue fork and merge request commands, and make the CLI useful for developers using AI agents to assist with Drupal.org issues.

More good news in Drupal 12 development. Long time in the making, the Navigation module just replaced Toolbar as the default navigation experience in the upcoming Drupal version. Not only more customisable, the new UI is also faster to use even with deep administration trees. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3575171

Historic moment in Drupal core! Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI will not be in Drupal 12 anymore. These are core modules dedicated to migrating Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 sites to core. Drupal 7 was end of life on January 5, 2025 while Drupal 6 EOL was February 24th 2016. The modules will still be in Drupal 11 core until its end of line expected at the end of 2028. See https://www.drupal.org/node/3466088 for issues around all deprecated modules and themes.

What if your Drupal site could feel faster without big changes? Lazy loading might be the easiest fix you’re not using.

Today we are talking about The Good and the Bad of AI , How our panel feels about AI , and you guessed it more AI with guest Scott Falconer. We'll also cover Field Widget Actions as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/542

Topics

• AI and Social Isolation
• How We Use AI
• Friction and Independence
• Stack Overflow Debate
• Collaboration and Team Culture
• Is AI Inevitable
• AI Hype Meets Costs
• Adoption Cooling Signals
• Pricing Inequality Risks
• Open Source and PRs
• Requirements and LLMs
• Easy Tools Not Always Right
• Juniors Learning and Patterns
• Human Value and Ambiguity
• Losing Cognitive Endurance
• AI vs Social Media
• Uniquely Human Skills

Resources

• Stack overflow

Guests

Scott Falconer - managing-ai.com scott-falconer

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Catherine Tsiboukas - mindcraftgroup.com bletch

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to enhance the Drupal content editing experience by allowing site builders to attach actionable buttons directly to field widgets on entity forms? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Field Widget Actions
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Oct 2025 by Artem Dmitriiev (a.dmitriiev) of 1x Internet, a founding member of the AI Initiative
  • Versions available: 1.0.0-alpha1 and 1.3.0, both of which works with Drupal 10.3 and 11.1 or newer
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation - includes Markdown files that explain how to set up and extend its capabilities
  • Number of open issues: 12 open issues, 4 of which are bugs
• Usage stats:
  • 24 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With this module installed, a site builder can attach action buttons to form fields in Drupal entity forms, for example for creating nodes or taxonomy terms
  • What happens when you click a button depends on what processor you associate with it, and the settings you configure for the processor. Processors can be provided by other modules, like AI or ECA.
  • For example, you could attach a button to a tags field that when clicked will send the content of the body field to an AI agent that will return a set of suggested tags. Or, you could have it trigger an ECA model for a more deterministic flow
  • This is all done using a plugin framework implemented by Field Widget Actions, so you also create your own custom processors to be used with action buttons
  • One of the things that got me excited about working with the team behind Augmentor AI was the approach that module used to make AI something a user would manually trigger, and then can curate before the suggestions are saved. Field Widget Actions allows that same approach to be implemented with the AI ecosystem that is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the team involved with Drupal's AI Initiative
  • It's worth noting that Field Widget Actions used to be a submodule of the AI project, so if you're using a version of that older than 2.0, you may already have Field Widget Actions available in your codebase

Commerce Core 3.3.0 completely reimagines how merchants interact with orders in the administrative back end. Common order management tasks are accessible from the order view page, and the edit tab will generally no longer be necessary.

This release resolved 102 issues, including bugs and feature requests, and the time was right to tackle longstanding order management requests we’ve heard from the merchants we support. Roadmap influence is a key benefit of working directly with Centarro on your Drupal Commerce projects.

Across the PHP ecosystem, a hard conversation is beginning to take shape. In a recent opinion piece, Ashraf Abed challenges four major open-source communities—Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and Mautic—to confront a shared reality: slower growth, tighter budgets, and a thinning contributor base. All four are PHP-driven, Composer-based, and built on open-source collaboration. Each has solved complex problems at scale. Yet they now compete not only with proprietary SaaS platforms but also with a broader shift toward consolidation, platform ecosystems, and AI-assisted development that lowers switching costs for engineers.

The argument is not about merging code into a single technical stack. It is about strategic alignment. Fragmentation means four marketing engines, four leadership structures, four roadmaps, and parallel efforts solving overlapping problems. Agencies struggle to hire, contributors stretch across projects, and enterprise buyers hesitate when long-term sustainability feels uncertain. As experienced PHP developers move more easily between frameworks, the historical barriers between communities are no longer purely technical—they are cultural and organisational.

The risks are real. Governance models differ. Brand identity runs deep. Millions of production sites require long-term security and stability. No transition would be simple, and no decision would satisfy everyone. But dismissing the conversation outright may be shortsighted. Open source thrives on bold thinking, especially when the status quo shows signs of strain. If the PHP ecosystem wants to strengthen its talent pipeline and competitive position for the next decade, serious dialogue about collaboration, specialisation, or even partial consolidation deserves attention.

With that context, here are the major stories from last week.

INTERVIEW

• Dan Frost on Drupal’s AI-Ready Architecture, Controlled AI, and AI-Mode SEO

EVENT

• Why Drupal Must Move Beyond the Bubble in the Age of AI
• Sponsorship Opportunities Open for DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026
• DrupalCamp Costa Rica 2026 Scheduled for 26–28 February at UCR Liberia
• Drupal 25th Anniversary Gala to Be Held During DrupalCon Chicago

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• SearXNG Module Enables Privacy-First Web Search for Drupal AI Assistants
• New Drupal Contrib Code Search Tool Indexes Drupal 10+ Compatible Projects
• Views Code Data Module Executes Drupal Views as Structured Data
• Dries Buytaert Launches Drupal Digests for AI-Powered Development Tracking

PHP

• Ashraf Abed Calls for Unified PHP Open-Source Framework to Address Sustainability Challenges

DRUPAL COMMUNITY

• Drupal Invites Community Feedback Through Drupal CMS Survey

SECURITY

• Security Pitfalls Drupal Module Maintainers Should Avoid

BLOG

• Robert Menetray details 20-60-20 AI workflow for Drupal development

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we pause here for this issue. For timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.

Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor
The DropTimes