AI, automation, community - Umbraco MVP Ian Grieve talks about his key takeaways from Copenhagen.
Last week, I had the privilege of attending Umbraco Codegarden 2026 in Copenhagen.
This year felt particularly special. Not only was Codegarden back in Copenhagen for the first time in 10 years, but it was also my first Codegarden and MVP Summit as an Umbraco MVP.
As always, Codegarden was a brilliant mix of product updates, technical deep dives, honest conversations, community catch-ups, and those unexpected moments that make the Umbraco community what it is. But more than anything, this year felt like a turning point.
AI was everywhere. Not in a “look at this shiny new thing” way, but in a much more mature, practical and sometimes challenging way.
How do we use AI well?
How do we keep people in control?
How do agencies adapt without racing to the bottom?
And how does a CMS like Umbraco remain valuable in a world where content, workflows, integrations and delivery channels are all changing quickly?
Those questions carried through the MVP Summit, the keynote sessions, the roundtables and the conversations in between.
Umbraco is in a really strong place
One of my biggest takeaways from the week is that Umbraco feels like it’s in a really sweet spot.
The product is mature. The roadmap is ambitious. The CMS remains at the centre, but the wider ecosystem around it is becoming much more powerful, with Cloud, Compose, Engage, Automate, AI tooling, improved search, stronger deployment approaches, and a growing focus on scalable digital experience platforms.
The Codegarden keynote brought that together clearly, with Umbraco describing the platform as one that “developers love and business trust”, supported by upcoming CMS features, Cloud improvements, AI capability, and the launch of Umbraco Automate. For us at Shout, that direction really matters.
We’re often helping clients manage complex digital estates, modernise legacy platforms, integrate multiple systems, improve editorial workflows, and plan for long-term maintainability. What stood out this year was how closely Umbraco’s roadmap aligns with the real-world challenges we’re already solving.
A composable approach gives teams greater control over how platforms evolve over time. Organisations can replace a single service at a time instead of replatforming an entire estate. That reduces migration disruption and lowers coordination overhead between engineering and content operations.
Automation is useful. Augmentation is where the value is.
The MVP Summit started with a particularly honest session from Phil Whittaker: “The most excited AND the most terrified I have ever been.”
That pretty much sums up where a lot of the industry is with AI right now.
One point that really resonated was the difference between automation and augmentation. Automation on its own can quickly become a race to the bottom. Someone else will always find a way to automate faster, cheaper, or with fewer steps.
Augmentation is different.
That’s where people and AI work together to create better outcomes. It’s not about removing the expertise, it’s about empowering the team, reducing friction, improving consistency, and freeing people up to spend more time on the work that really needs human judgement.
The discussions around AI-driven Umbraco development, agentic engineering, spec kits, skills, and team workflows all felt very relevant to where agencies are heading. The big question for us isn’t simply “can AI do this?” It’s “how do we embed this responsibly, commercially, securely, and in a way that improves the quality of what we deliver?”
That’s a much more interesting challenge.
From vibe coding to agentic engineering
Matthew Wise’s session, “Vibe Coder to AI Engineer”, was another standout.
The talk followed a refreshingly honest journey through AI-assisted development, moving from prompts, guesswork into a more structured workflow using Claude Code, context engineering, MCP servers, sub-agents, custom commands and skills.
The important bit wasn’t that AI could generate code. We know that.
The important bit was the shift in discipline.
Good AI-assisted development still needs planning, context, review, architecture, and judgement. It needs developers who understand when the output is useful, when it’s wrong, and when the AI hallucinates.
That’s the real lesson.
AI tools can make us all more productive in the right scenarios, but only when they’re guided by people who understand the problem, the platform, and the outcome they’re trying to achieve.
Umbraco Automate: a very practical step forward
One of the major announcements from Codegarden was Umbraco Automate, a new open-source automation add-on for Umbraco.
Automate brings a drag-and-drop automation engine directly into the Umbraco backoffice, allowing teams to build “if this, then that” style workflows where the content already lives. It supports native triggers and actions across the CMS and other Umbraco products, can connect to external services via webhooks, and includes human-in-the-loop approval so people remain in control before external or AI-generated actions go live.
That last point is important.
There’s a lot of value in making workflows faster. But for business-critical websites, regulated content, customer communications and integrated digital products, control matters just as much as speed.
The fact Automate runs within your Umbraco infrastructure, rather than forcing everything through a third-party automation platform, is also a strong fit for organisations that care about governance, hosting, security and data ownership. Umbraco has confirmed a beta release for Umbraco 17 is available now, with final release planned for July 9.
For clients, this could become a really practical way to reduce repetitive operational tasks without creating a disconnected automation layer outside the CMS.
AI in Umbraco, and Umbraco in AI
A recurring theme across the week was the two-way relationship between Umbraco and AI.
There’s AI inside Umbraco, helping editors and teams work more efficiently. But there’s also Umbraco becoming accessible to AI tools through MCP, allowing agents to understand and interact with CMS structures in controlled ways.
Phil Whittaker’s “Umbraco in AI” session explored how agents could work with Umbraco through MCP architecture, backoffice skills, implementation workflows and content modelling. Bolette Kern’s session also looked at the bigger strategic question: how do you work with a CMS platform when the future is changing so quickly?
The answer, for me, comes back to strong foundations.
AI is useful when the CMS has well-structured content, clear permissions, predictable APIs, good governance, and a sensible information architecture. Without that, AI simply accelerates mess.
Umbraco’s MCP direction is interesting because it builds on the platform’s existing strengths: APIs, permissions, extensibility, and developer experience. Umbraco’s remote MCP work on Cloud is designed to let editors connect preferred AI clients to draft, find, update and publish content, while keeping permissions and human approval in place.
That feels like the right direction. Not AI as a bolt-on gimmick, but AI as another interface into a well-governed platform.
Compose and the reality of modern digital estates
Jordan McFarlane’s session on Umbraco Compose was another one that closely matched the type of work we see day to day.
Gone are the days where a website is simply powered by one CMS. Most organisations now have content, data and business logic spread across multiple systems: CMS, PIM, DAM, ERP, CRM, search platforms, marketing tools and more.
That creates a lot of complexity.
Umbraco Compose is designed to help orchestrate content between backend systems and delivery channels, giving teams a more consistent way to coordinate data and content flow without relying on bespoke integration layers every time. Modern websites are now backed by a mix of systems and Compose aims to make that orchestration easier for authors, business users and developers alike.
That matters because composable architecture is only valuable when it reduces friction. If every project needs a completely custom orchestration layer, the benefits can quickly get swallowed by maintenance overhead.
A supported, productised approach to content orchestration has the potential to make composable delivery more predictable, more scalable and easier to maintain.
The roadmap: Mature, but definitely not standing stilI
Andy Butland’s roadmap session on Umbraco 17 and beyond reinforced how much work is going into the CMS foundations.
The focus on global elements, performance improvements and the transition towards EF Core might not sound as headline-grabbing as AI, but these are exactly the kinds of improvements that make a difference on real projects.
Global elements, in particular, are something content teams have needed for a long time. Reusable content patterns such as CTAs, banners, contact details and shared blocks are common across large sites. Making those easier to manage directly in the backoffice improves governance, reduces duplication and makes life easier for editors.
That’s the kind of product maturity we like to see.
Not every improvement has to be loud. Some of the best ones quietly remove pain from everyday workflows.
Resilience still matters
Callum Whyte’s session on building resilient Umbraco integrations was a welcome reminder that while AI and automation are exciting, the basics still matter.
APIs go down. Servers crash. Queues build up. External systems fail. That isn’t pessimism, it’s software.
The important thing is designing systems that fail gracefully and recover properly. Caching, queues, retries, circuit breakers, observability, logging, dashboards and alerts are not afterthoughts. They’re core parts of building digital products that people can rely on.
This really aligns with how we approach long-term digital platforms at Shout. A good launch is important, but what matters just as much is how the platform behaves six months later, under load, during a campaign, when an integration fails, or when a content team needs confidence that business-critical workflows will keep running.
Engage: start practical, grow strategic
Frans de Jong’s session on Umbraco Engage was another practical highlight.
The message was clear. Don’t try to do everything at once.
Start with a realistic first project. Scope it properly. Create visible value early. Then use that foundation to grow into deeper insight, optimisation, personalisation and strategic decision-making.
That’s a sensible approach.
Personalisation and analytics can quickly become overwhelming if they’re treated as a huge transformation project from day one. But when they’re implemented carefully, with clear goals and measurable value, they can become a powerful part of continuous improvement.
Separating the promise from the noise
Richard Campbell’s sessions provided a useful counterbalance to the AI excitement.
“After the AI Hype” focused on what’s real, what’s next and where genuine value is emerging. “Above the Cloud” took things even further, exploring the practical, physical and environmental realities behind large-scale compute and the idea of data centres in space.
It was a good reminder that technology doesn’t exist in isolation.
AI has real potential, but it also has real infrastructure, sustainability, cost and governance implications. The best conversations at Codegarden weren’t about blindly chasing hype. They were about understanding where the value is, what the trade-offs are, and how we make responsible decisions.
That’s an important mindset for anyone building modern digital platforms.
The agency model is changing shape
Karla Santi’s closing session, “Shift Happens: What’s Really Changing for Agencies in 2026”, was a strong way to end the event.
Economic pressure, AI acceleration, stalled sales pipelines and changing client expectations are all reshaping the agency world.
The work hasn’t disappeared. It has changed shape.
Clients still need technical expertise. They still need robust platforms. They still need great user experiences, content strategies, integrations, performance, accessibility, security and support.
But they increasingly need partners who can help them make sense of change.
That’s where events like Codegarden are so valuable. They don’t just show us what’s new. They help us understand what’s next, and how to bring that thinking back into the work we do every day.
Community is still the heart of it
Of course, Codegarden wouldn’t be Codegarden without the people.
The MVP Summit roundtables were full of thoughtful discussion around community contribution, package maintainers, media improvements, trust, breaking changes, and how to make it easier for more people to get involved. There were also conversations around meetups, awareness and creating more entry points into the Umbraco community.
That community element is still one of the biggest reasons we love working with Umbraco.
It’s not just a product ecosystem. It’s a group of people who share ideas, challenge each other, help solve problems, contribute packages, give feedback, speak honestly, and make the platform better.
For me personally, attending my first MVP Summit made that even more meaningful.
Why this matters for Shout
I came away from Codegarden 2026 with a lot to think about.
AI-assisted delivery
Agentic engineering
Content orchestration
Automation inside the CMS
Practical personalisation
Resilient integrations
Cloud maturity
Editor experience
Changing agency models
But the biggest takeaway is that Umbraco is evolving in a direction that aligns strongly with the kind of digital products we build at Shout.
Flexible, composable, scalable platforms
Strong CMS foundations
Better tools for editors and developers
Responsible use of AI
Long-term partnerships built around value, not just delivery
Codegarden 2026 was a reminder that innovation isn’t just about adding more features. It’s about solving the right problems in a way that helps people work better.
A huge thank you to Umbraco HQ, the MVP community, the speakers, partners and everyone who made the week so valuable.
I’ve returned from Copenhagen with new ideas, new energy, and plenty of practical thinking to bring into our client work.
