There’s always something valuable to take away from attending an Umbraco event. Not just to hear what’s new, but to sense where the platform and the community is heading.
Umbraco Spark delivered exactly that.
Across the day, the talks covered a broad spectrum of the ecosystem. From AI and content strategy through to upgrade approaches and backoffice evolution, there was a consistent theme:
Make Umbraco more intuitive, scalable, and aligned to modern digital needs.
Matt Sutherland, Head of Technology at true digital, delivered a session titled 'A website, an email, and an AI summary walk into a bar' where he explored something many organisations are getting to grips with: how content needs to evolve in an AI-driven world.
The focus on GEO-ready content (content optimised for generative engines, not just traditional search) was particularly interesting.
Key takeaways:
Content is no longer just written for humans or search engines, it's being consumed and interpreted by AI
Structuring and centralising product/content data becomes critical to ensure consistency across channels
Tools like Struct offer a way to manage this complexity, creating a single source of truth for products
What brought this to life was the demonstration of Umbraco AI, showing how repetitive, high-volume tasks can be streamlined. It's a clear signal that AI in Umbraco isn't about replacing teams it's about removing friction and freeing up time for higher-value work.
Rachel Breeze, Development Practice Lead and .NET Developer at Nexer Digital, tackled a question we hear time and time again:
Should we stay where we are, upgrade, or start again?
There's no one-size-fits-all approach.
Instead, it's about:
Understanding your current platform constraints
Aligning decisions to business goals
Balancing risk, cost, and long-term maintainability
It strongly resonated with how we approach Umbraco upgrades at Shout. Particularly the idea that proactive planning reduces complexity, something we've seen repeatedly in real-world migrations.
For many organisations, the right answer isn't a full rewrite, it's a well-planned, phased evolution. Which is even more important to plan with Umbraco 13 reaching EOL on December 14th 2026.
For me, the biggest takeaway came from Niels Lyngso, Technical Product Manager at Umbraco, where he explored what's new in the Umbraco backoffice.
Specifically: reusable global content blocks.
This has been on the wish list for a long time, and the introduction of the Element Library feels like a significant step forward.
Content reuse has always been possible in Umbraco but not always intuitive.
The Element Library changes that by:
Allowing editors to create reusable content elements centrally
Converting existing content into reusable elements
Unlinking elements back into standalone content when needed
Creating elements from scratch with reuse in mind
This gives content teams far more control over how they structure and manage content across a site.
What really stood out wasn't just the feature itself, it was the thought behind the editor experience.
A few subtle but powerful improvements:
Visual indicators showing when content is reused elsewhere
Clearer feedback when elements are referenced across multiple pages
Improvements to diffing, making it easier to understand what's actually changed
These might sound like small UI tweaks, but they solve real-world frustrations.
And importantly, this thinking isn't limited to global elements. The same concepts are being extended across media and other areas of the CMS.
Another key point: this isn't a 'big bang' feature.
The rollout of global elements and backoffice improvements will be iterative, with enhancements introduced over time.
That's a smart move.
It allows Umbraco to:
Gather real-world feedback
Refine the experience
Continuously improve without disrupting existing workflows
What Spark made clear is that Umbraco is continuing to evolve in the right areas:
AI-assisted workflows to reduce manual effort
Clearer upgrade strategies to support long-term sustainability
A more intuitive backoffice designed around how editors actually work
It's not just about adding features, it's about improving the experience of using the platform.
And it's those subtle, considered improvements that are positioning Umbraco as a best-in-class CMS for both developers and content teams.
© 2026 Shout Digital
