Yesterday’s door was looking back at the launch of Drupal CMS 1.0, and today we look forward to CMS 2.0, which currently has an Alpha release available.
It is expected to launch early in 2026, though I suspect it won’t make it for Drupal’s 25th birthday.
At DrupalCon Nara, Cristina Chumillas and Pamela Barone talked about developments since the first release, and how community and company-backed contributions have increased significantly, strengthening the ecosystem. CMS 2.0 builds on this momentum, prioritising usability, and enabling non-technical users to build sites in hours rather than months.
A major shift in Drupal CMS 2.0 is the introduction of site templates: near feature-complete starting points designed around specific use cases. Instead of generic setups, site templates like Starter, Byte (for SaaS), and the upcoming Lumen (for nonprofits) bundle Drupal CMS, Canvas, themes, content types, and relevant functionality with sample content. This approach reduces upfront complexity and moves Drupal toward a low-code, and eventually no-code, experience while still allowing flexibility and extensibility.
Canvas is the centerpiece of this transformation. It provides a visual, component-based way to build landing pages and content layouts, mapping fields directly to components and dramatically simplifying tasks that were previously complex in Drupal. Alongside Canvas, Drupal CMS 2.0 introduces dynamic recommended add-ons and recipes that make powerful integrations – such as Mailchimp for email signups and Stripe for payments – quick to install and easy to use, lowering the barrier for non-technical users to get from initial install to production ready site.
Looking ahead, the Drupal CMS team is focused on improving onboarding, UX involvement, multilingual support, hosting pathways, and update workflows. With a small core team, progress depends heavily on community collaboration, especially from UX experts and module maintainers. The goal is to make Drupal easier to start, faster to build with, and more competitive, while preserving its flexibility and power.
It will also offer more straightforward hosting options, allowing Drupal sites access to low cost hosting options that make it a viable option for small sites once more.
Drupal CMS 2.0 promises another leap forward, and promises to open up Drupal to a wider audience, and I’m very much looking forward to its release.
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