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We’re bringing you the latest monthly overview of top Drupal articles, including news from the first-ever Japanese DrupalCon and more. We hope you enjoy our selection for November!
DrupalCon Lands in Japan: Historic Momentum as Drupal Eyes Its Next Chapter
During the first-ever Japanese DrupalCon which took place in Nara, Drupal founder Dries Buytaert identified four key initiatives that will be instrumental in the future of Drupal. These are: Drupal CMS 2.0, Drupal Canvas, site templates, and the Drupal AI initiative. Together these address Drupal’s historically steep learning curve, making it more accessible and intuitive.
Another important point that he addressed during his DrupalCon Nara keynote Q&A session was the challenge of competing with large proprietary platforms, and streamlining Drupal marketing to properly challenge the commonly outdated perception of Drupal. To this end, Dries’s vision for the next three to five years is focused entirely on the growth of Drupal.
Read more about Dries’s DrupalCon Nara keynote Q&A
Showcasing Drupal Excellence: Refreshed Industry Pages and a Renewed Commitment
Next up, we have an article from Ryan Witcombe on the Drupal Association blog about the new and refreshed industry landing page experience on drupal.org. These new pages aim to provide practical, real-world industry insights rather than surface-level CMS messaging.
They feature case studies of impactful projects from Drupal Certified Partners, covering key industry sectors such as enterprise, government, education, healthcare, and more. The case studies that are featured are geographically diverse, regularly reviewed and updated, and of course meticulously selected to address real-world pain points and challenges from decision makers considering Drupal.
Read more about refreshed industry pages on drupal.org
How Sharp Europe Serves 120,000 Enterprise Customers with Drupal
We continue with another post by Ryan Witcombe, this one featuring a case study presented at DrupalCon Nara about how the electronics giant Sharp Europe uses Drupal to serve 120,000 enterprise customers across 48 countries with 17 sites in 19 languages.
Drupal was the ideal fit for refreshing Sharp’s outdated MarTech stack, due to its open source nature, enterprise scalability, cloud-readiness, security focus, and robust API support.
They chose 1xINTERNET as their Drupal partner, emphasizing the need for an integrated partner rather than simply a vendor. The results speak for themselves, increasing agility while supporting flexibility thanks to the satisfaction of internal stakeholders and improved traffic optimization.
Read more about the Sharp Europe case study
Drupal AI Summit, Paris | Creating AI systems that belong to everyone
The next November post comes from Paul Johnson who announced the upcoming Drupal AI Summit in Paris. The summit is taking place on 9 December as part of the larger Future of Software Technologies (FOST) conference, featuring over 25 co-located tech conferences besides the Drupal AI Summit.
Thanks to its open source nature, Drupal is uniquely positioned to help professionals get more from AI innovation while also providing transparency that closed AI systems lack. The Drupal AI initiative is seeing significant momentum, and this event aims to showcase and unify all the effort and progress that has been made.
Read more about the Drupal AI Summit
Who Will You Nominate? The 2026 Aaron Winborn Award Opens Today
We continue with a post from Michael Anello announcing the opening of the nominations for the 2026 edition of the Aaron Winborn Award. This annual award honors the legacy of impactful Drupal contributor Aaron Winborn, celebrating community qualities such as kindness, service, generosity and integrity.
Over its 10-year history, the award has showcased diverse Drupal community members embodying these qualities. Drupalists are encouraged to nominate people who they feel deserve recognition for their dedication to making Drupal a welcoming place through mentoring, event organization, etc. Nominations are open until Friday, 9 January 2026.
Read more about nominations opening for the 2026 Aaron Winborn Award
High Scalability Hosting for Your Enterprise Drupal Projects
Moving on with this month’s overview, we have an article from amazee.io’s Katy Walsh about the importance of high scalability hosting for enterprise Drupal projects. Without the right hosting infrastructure, businesses fail to capitalize on product launches and resulting traffic that exceed expectations.
Katy distinguishes between two primary types of website scaling: vertical scaling, where you add more power to a single server; and horizontal scaling, which means adding additional servers/containers.
She also breaks down key ingredients of a scalable Drupal host: containerization, performance-first architecture, automated load balancing, robust caching, advanced CDN integration, and enterprise-level security.
Read more about scalable Drupal hosting
The product we should not have killed
In the next post, Dries Buytaert writes about Acquia’s decision from 2015 to shut down their SaaS Drupal site builder, Drupal Gardens, originally launched in 2009. As this platform evolved towards Acquia Cloud Site Factory, it was no longer feasible for Acquia to maintain both this enterprise solution and the original simpler platform, resulting in the end of Drupal Gardens.
For the past 18 months, Acquia have been building an open alternative to Site Factory to address the gap left by the discontinuation of Drupal Gardens. More powerful and customizable as Drupal Gardens, the new Acquia Source will cater to both simple and more complex uses, acting as a complement to existing Acquia products.
Read more about Drupal Gardens & Acquia Source
Helping Organizations Turn AI Potential into Real Impact
We conclude this month’s selection with another post from Paul Johnson, this one on the Starshot Initiative’s blog. He announces the creation of Drupal AI Industry Guides which showcase projects where AI was able to deliver real-life, measurable positive impact.
The Guides cover 15 different industries, with 4 practical use cases for each industry. They’re written by industry experts who have firsthand experience implementing Drupal and AI.
Every presented use case is based on actual ROI and showcases strengths of Drupal AI such as optimizing workflows, improving user experience, optimizing data-driven decision making, and reducing operational costs and risks.
