The full pre-planned content of DrupalCon Chicago includes three keynotes from Dries Buytaert, Alexandra Bell and the Drupal CMS team, over 75 sessions (some of which are featured innovation content), seven summits (AI, Government, Higher Education, Non-profit, Healthcare, Community and Drupal Partners), three professional hands-on trainings, the free Drupal in a Day beginner workshop and social events, including the Drupal 25th Anniversary Gala! Use the Sessionize mobile app to view the pre-planned program on the device you’ll have with you at the conference.
DrupalCon also offers participants unconference space of attendee organized sessions (Birds of a Feather). Those are not included in the pre-planned schedule and not presented in the mobile app. Don't miss those either!
Access all DrupalCon content
***Sessions and speakers are subject to change. Additional sessions will be added as they become available.
08:00 to 17:00 CDT
Drupal's Recipes Initiative is redefining how we build and share functionality, moving beyond distributions toward lightweight, composable recipes and site templates.
Enabling ambitious site builders has always been a superpower of Drupal and the introduction of Drupal Canvas has taken this to another level. This session will explore advanced site-building techniques utilizing the new Drupal Canvas module.
We are witnessing a fundamental shift in how businesses utilize Artificial Intelligence. The era of simple, text-based chatbots is ending.
Drupal's Single Directory Components (SDC) represent a significant shift in how we approach component-based theming by grouping templates, CSS, and JavaScript into a single directory.
Shipping updates for Drupal sites doesn’t have to be stressful or error-prone.
HTMX has been added to Drupal 11.2 as a light javascript dependency to modernize and unify many legacy Drupal APIs: AJAX, AJAX for Views, Form States, Big Pipe…
For websites to be accessible, content needs to be thoughtfully arranged into sections and navigable by headings, so users can easily scan a page and find the information they are seeking.
Design governance isn’t just about creating a design system—it’s about making it work for everyone across your organization. From brand portals and Figma style guides to UI kits and component libraries, teams today have powerful tools at their disposal.
All too frequently the relationship between sales and delivery is a constant balancing act. Sales teams are driven by ambitious targets, while delivery teams are focused on accurate scoping, sustainable recovery rates, and the practical realities of open-source implementation. The result?
Great non-profit websites do more than deliver content, they create connection. They guide users, inspire engagement and donations, and make complex organizations feel human.
AI technologies are evolving faster than our ability to understand them, much less control them.
Guests can pre-register for the luncheon during the DrupalCon Chicago registration process. If you’re already registered and would like to add the luncheon, simply use the “Modify” button in your confirmation email to update your registration.
How do you learn to cook? Try the dish first, watch someone make it, deconstruct the recipe, then make it yourself. Same with fixing cars, playing music, or any skill. But learning AI in Drupal is hard - where are the working examples to try?
Drupal has always thrived because of its passionate developer community. But the future of Drupal depends on something bigger: the ecosystem around it. Designers, communicators, strategists, web managers, and decision-makers all influence whether Drupal gets adopted and sustained.
When your Drupal site spans thousands of pages, good content structure isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. This 30-minute session will share practical strategies for managing large-scale Drupal sites through user-centered information architecture (IA) and smart use of Drupal’s tools.
This technical session covers the high-level architecture and inner workings of Drupal Canvas. The session focuses on the back-end aspects that Drupal developers need to know when developing with future Canvas adoption in mind.
Security and privacy compliance certifications—like SOC 2 (a leading audit standard for security, availability, and confidentiality) and HITRUST (a healthcare-focused security framework)—are quickly becoming standard requirements for healthcare, finance, and other regulated industries building on
Do you want to contribute but are not sure how? Check out the First Time Contributor Pathway for a list of recommended sessions at DrupalCon Chicago to help you figure out how to use your particular skills to contribute to the Drupal project!
Drupal excels at the Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE) model—using structured content to enable the same individual piece of content to flow into a variety of contexts.
Explore practical strategies for adopting Drupal's Drupal Canvas in existing platforms, ensuring a smooth transition without compromising current investments.
Site templates are a big deal. They have the potential to open Drupal up to more people than ever by delivering functional and beautiful starter sites. But it's up to the Drupal community to create them. And, as with anything in the Drupal world, there are a few ways to go about it.
In this session we will let you all see behind the curtain of amazea.ai. This will not be a sales pitch in any way, but rather an in depth overview how AI infrastructure is ran today on a global scale. While AI developers might only see an API endpoint, behind the scenes a lot more is happening.
As a project manager, I remember how overwhelming it was to handle that big Drupal multi-site rollout. There were so many tickets to track, and the client’s priorities kept shifting.
Organizations rush to implement AI but see minimal ROI by treating it as a feature rather than a fundamental shift in how teams work. This gap costs companies millions in wasted licenses and missed opportunities.
Chat bubbles are everywhere, but are they actually working for users? Sandstorm® conducted usability studies with actual users to uncover what people really want when interacting with AI-driven tools.
Drupal’s frontend ecosystem continues to evolve, and the right frontend strategy depends on the project context. Rather than a narrow “how-to” on a specific editor or framework, this session looks across types of Drupal frontend projects and the strategies that make them successful.
Dive deeper into the latest developments of Drupal CMS and the AI Initiative in a series of lightning talks. The speakers are not only experts in their field, but they are the ones leading each area of development or research.
Today the European Commission runs one of the largest Drupal platforms in the world. In the beginning it was adoption without contribution. Each institution tried to implement similar solutions.
To be a true enterprise content management system, Drupal must support comprehensive, site-wide content staging.
What if you could open up the world of Agents, so that people with communication and language skills could focus on the prompt writing and the actual way the Agents interact with Drupal or its content is just an abstraction that you get access to with a click of a button.
Everyone’s talking about RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), but let’s be honest: the standard demo usually goes something like this: split your content into chunks, toss them into a vector database, cross your fingers, and hope the LLM comes back with something vaguely useful.
With the launch of the Drupal AI Initiative approaching its one-year anniversary, now is the perfect time for a critical look back and an exciting preview of what's next.
Join the Drupal.org engineering team for updates on our work to support the community.
Team's aren't getting stuck because they lack ideas -- they get stuck because they can’t agree on what to try next. Whether it’s due to navigating internal politics, a fear of failure, or decision fatigue, progress becomes a never-ending churn when a path forward struggles to be defined.
HTMX has steadily risen among JavaScript projects since its release in recent years, gaining more new stars on GitHub in 2024 than React. Now HTMX is integrated into Drupal core and forms the basis of a subsystem that will replace our jQuery based Ajax API.
A major contributing factor to the Digital Divide - the unequal access to and effective use of digital technology - lies squarely with those of us who build and maintain websites.
