DrupalCon Europe 2025 returns to Vienna from October 14-17, 2025, at the Austria Center Vienna, marking what could be the most pivotal conference in Drupal's 24-year history. As the global Drupal community gathers in Austria's capital, they face a paradox: celebrating groundbreaking innovations while confronting significant challenges that threaten the platform's future relevance.

The Future Arrives: Drupal CMS and Canvas Transform Site Building

Vienna represents a watershed moment for Drupal's evolution. DrupalCon Vienna marks the arrival of Drupal Canvas 1.0, ready for production, fundamentally changing how Drupal sites are built. This isn't merely an incremental update—it's a complete paradigm shift designed to address longstanding criticisms about Drupal's complexity and learning curve.

Drupal CMS 1.0 launched on January 15, 2025, providing organizations with two distinct paths: Drupal Core for expert users who want complete control, and Drupal CMS as a ready-to-use platform for marketing teams, content creators, and site builders. The new system includes advanced media management, SEO tools, AI-driven website building, consent management, analytics, search capabilities, and automatic updates—all configured out of the box.

The roadmap extends well beyond Vienna. Drupal CMS 2.0 is planned for release in September 2025, featuring Experience Builder 1.0, the first Site Templates, and full AI Framework integration. These innovations promise role-based customizable dashboards, advanced workflow systems with multi-level approvals, and native integration with marketing automation tools and enterprise CRM systems.

Drupal Canvas unleashes a component-driven, in-browser development workflow that enables faster, more collaborative builds while leveraging UI-embedded code and reusable components for efficiency. For developers and site builders attending Vienna, this represents the most significant change to Drupal's development methodology since the platform's inception.

The Stark Reality: Drupal's Declining Market Position

However, beneath the excitement of innovation lies a sobering reality that the Vienna conference must address head-on. Drupal's market share has been in steady decline, raising questions about the platform's long-term viability despite these technological advances.

The numbers paint a concerning picture. As of 2025 at the time of this article, approximately 694,000 active websites currently use Drupal (see https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal). While still substantial in absolute terms, the trend lines are unmistakably downward. Between 2024 and May 2025, Drupal's market share declined by 25%, a precipitous drop that underscores the urgency behind the platform's transformation efforts.

Financial Pressures and Organizational Challenges

The Drupal Association's financial situation adds another layer of complexity to Vienna's significance. Historical data reveals ongoing struggles with event profitability and revenue diversification. DrupalCon Europe generally operated at a loss before being outsourced to an dedicated organiser.

DrupalCon North America makes up most of Drupal Association's annual revenue, while the European event's income is lower due to fewer attendees and less sponsor support, with expense per attendee being higher in Europe. There is a clear decline in sponsors participations due to an ongoing financial pressure from market conditions. However, speakers attendence is still strong, the schedule is packed with interesting topics with the most clustered topics being for Drupal CMS or AI.

Vienna's Strategic Programming: Addressing Critical Challenges

DrupalCon Vienna's programming directly confronts these challenges through carefully curated content designed to demonstrate Drupal's renewed relevance and competitive advantages.

The conference features four keynote presentations, including the Driesnote by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, "Neurodiversity: An Underrated Superpower in Business" with Vera Herzmann, "The Web in 2035" panel with Sebastian Bergmann, Ondřej Mirtes, Derick Rethans & Sachiko Muto, and "Drupal CMS Spotlights" with community leaders. Why choose 2035?, it seems such a wild guess.

Technical highlights include sessions on AI integration, with the AI module now installed on over 7,200 Drupal  websites representing incredible growth since its launch just 12 months ago. 

The Community Response: Cautious Optimism

The Drupal community's response to Vienna reflects both excitement about technical innovations and realistic assessment of market challenges. The 2025 Drupal Business Survey will be presented, now being an official tool of Drupal Association.

After a difficult 2023, agency pipelines were looking stronger in early 2024, with public sector, education, and nonprofits remaining Drupal's strongest markets while healthcare and medicine showed signs of growth. These sectors represent Drupal's core strength in complex, security-sensitive implementations that require the platform's robust architecture.

Government agencies, educational institutions, and major corporations continue turning to Drupal for its ability to handle complex content models, heavy traffic loads, and strict security requirements. The platform's success in these demanding environments demonstrates its technical superiority, even as it struggles in the broader market.

Vienna's Verdict: Transformation or Decline?

DrupalCon Vienna 2025 arrives at a critical juncture where the platform's technical excellence must translate into market recovery. The conference represents more than a showcase of new features—it's a community-wide effort to chart a sustainable path forward in an increasingly competitive landscape.

With over 1,000 developers, designers, content creators, business leaders, and decision-makers gathering from around the globe to network, collaborate, and shape the future of open-source innovation, Vienna offers the opportunity to address fundamental questions about Drupal's future positioning.

The platform's strength in enterprise, government, and education sectors provides a foundation for growth, but success will depend on whether the new user-friendly tools can attract the small and medium-sized organizations that have increasingly chosen alternatives. The focus on simplification and lowering barriers to entry represents a recognition that technical excellence alone is insufficient in today's market.

As noted in the State of Drupal presentation, the goal is to broaden Drupal's reach beyond its traditional user base and reach more people than ever before, with many new features designed specifically for non-developers.

The financial sustainability of the Drupal Association and its events remains an ongoing concern that Vienna must address through improved sponsor engagement and value demonstration. The success of the technical innovations showcased in Vienna will ultimately be judged by their impact on adoption rates, community growth, and the platform's competitive position.

As the  Drupal community converges on Vienna this October, they carry the responsibility of not just celebrating past achievements but charting a course for future relevance. The city that once served as the crossroads of empires now hosts a community at its own crossroads, where the decisions made and connections formed may determine whether Drupal's next chapter is one of renaissance or decline.

The future of digital experience platforms may well be decided in those October days along the Danube.

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