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We’re bringing you our latest monthly overview of top Drupal articles and news. We hope you enjoy this month’s selection!
The gap between Drupal and its reputation
The first article we want to highlight this month comes from Dries Buytaert, who references two recent LinkedIn posts to discuss the gap between Drupal’s capabilities and reputation. Despite its steady innovation, many people still see Drupal as an outdated technology, completely discounting its widespread use in sectors such as government and higher education.
According to Dries, the best way to counteract this narrative is to be open and vocal about cases where Drupal excels. In this sense, the Drupal community is somewhat complicit in this negative perception of Drupal. So, Dries encourages people to keep sharing Drupal wins, in order to help the broader tech community understand its actual strength.
Read more about the gap between Drupal and its reputation
The Future of Drupal Is Collaborative: How the Drupal AI Initiative Is Redefining Open Source Marketing
In a similar vein, we have an article from 1xINTERNET’s Paul Johnson, the Marketing Manager of the Drupal AI initiative, who wrote about the streamlined marketing strategy of the initiative and how it’s now being adopted by the broader Drupal Marketing team.
As Paul highlights, one of the most significant changes has been closer alignment between marketing and product development. This is also reflected in the recently published Drupal AI Roadmap, which outlines plans for 8 different areas of features prioritised for 2026.
The other important change is frequent events dedicated to Drupal and AI – Drupal AI Summits. In the past half year, several of these have been held across Europe and USA, with an Enterprise AI Summit planned for later this year, coinciding with DrupalCon Rotterdam.
Read more about Drupal AI marketing
Bots, scrapers, and proxies: defending Drupal sites in an automated internet
We continue with an article by Sean Hamlin of amazee on his blog Pixelite, based on his recent talk from DrupalSouth Wellington 2026. He provides a comprehensive overview of how to efficiently protect Drupal sites against automated traffic, specifically bots, scrapers and proxies.
The article covers different layers of protection, from Drupal-native defenses closest to Drupal apps, to web server and infrastructure defenses, and edge & paid bot management. Stacking the different layers is key to proper protection.
A new tool that Sean specifically highlights is Anubis, an MIT licensed open-source reverse proxy that lets client requests through not based on CAPCTHA, but a proof-of-work challenge.
Read more about protecting Drupal sites against automated traffic
How Drupal is keeping pace with a changing digital market in 2026
In the next article from May, Owen Lansbury of PreviousNext shared his views on Drupal’s position in the current volatile digital market. Incidentally, this article is also based on Owen’s talk from the same event, DrupalSouth Wellington 2026.
He starts by looking at the relatively consistent 30% business decline experienced by both industry leaders and small Drupal shops, and the reasons behind this downturn. One of the biggest ones is the impact of AI on the (otherwise growing) CMS market.
According to Owen, the new Drupal CMS is one of the best leverages for growing a Drupal business in 2026. He also recommends playing on Drupal’s strength as a hybrid CMS, adapting to AI, and investing more in open-source technologies that you use regularly.
Read more about Drupal’s position in the changing digital market of 2026
Getting comfortable with Gitlab and the Drupal issue queue
Next up, we have an article from Mike Anello of DrupalEasy who shares two tips to help people get used to working with the new Drupal issue queue on GitLab. The first thing he recommends is enabling notifications; since GitLab’s default configuration for notifications is to be sent to a no-reply email address, this has to be manually.
Mike’s second tip involves the issue tracker page, which only shows drupal.org issues and not GitLab ones. His solution is a filtered view of Work items to show only issues the user is specifically subscribed to, but this has a couple of problems, such as not showing which issues have had updates since the last check.
Read more about Mike’s tips for the GitLab Drupal issue queue
Drupal (AI) Playground: AI ate my work, and I need to be okay with that.
Another interesting article comes from Jacob Rockowitz who is documenting his experimentation with AI and Drupal through a series of blog posts. In this particular one, he explores how AI changes the development process and what this means for Drupal.
One of the questions that Jacob raises is how to maintain an AI-generated Drupal module. He emphasises the value of reviewing AI-generated code himself and in tandem with another AI, as well as the importance of AI using test-driven development.
As for the broader Drupal community, Jacob identifies three key areas where Drupal can be particularly useful: helping with documentation, and both onboarding people into the community as well as offboarding them.
Read more about jrockowitz’s thoughts on Drupal and AI
Acquia builds Drupal funding into its partner program
Moving on, we have another article by Dries in which he announces the launch of the Acquia Fair Trade Initiative. The idea behind the initiative is that for every deal an Acquia Partner closes, Acquia contributes an amount equal to 2% of that deal’s value to the Drupal Association in order to fund future Drupal open source development.
Even though the donation is made by Acquia, it gets publicly attributed to the specific Acquia Partner and counts towards their standing in the DA’s Certified Partner Program. Additionally, it is not a one off contribution, but rather a continuous effort to simultaneously grow Acquia, its partners, and the broader Drupal ecosystem.
Read more about the Acquia Fair Trade Initiative
Drupal AI in 2026: Status, Architecture, and Roadmap
For the final highlight from May, we have another article from 1xINTERNET, this one written by Christoph Breidert and based on his talk from Drupal Developer Days Athens in April.
Christoph starts with general information about the Drupal AI Initiative, i.e. its structure and funding. He specifically dives into the planned architecture of Drupal AI 2.0, whose main components are AI Core, the AI Official Modules, and the AI Official Recipes.
The final part of his article is dedicated to the full 2026 roadmap for Drupal AI, with a focus on what the initiative is building in the next three to six months.
