An Overview of Umbraco Winter Keynote 2026
8 min read
2026's Umbraco Winter Keynote opened by reflecting on a landmark year. Umbraco celebrated 20 years as an open source CMS and 2025 was positioned as one of its strongest years yet. Product momentum was a major theme with the release of Umbraco 16, Umbraco 17 LTS, Canadian hosting expansion and the launch of the Umbraco MCP server to connect Umbraco and AI.
For the full keynote, check out Umbraco HQ’s YouTube video, but for the headlines, read on!
Key Announcements: Global Support, Partner Portal, ISO Certification and Umbraco Compose
Four major announcements anchored the business update.
- As of Sunday 1st February 2026, Umbraco now offers full 24 hour global support with a 100 percent SLA, positioning this as an industry disrupting benchmark.
- A new partner portal also launched during the keynote with this described as the backbone of future Umbraco partner engagement.
- Umbraco announced ISO/IEC 27001 certification, confirming enterprise readiness and formalising security standards.
- Umbraco Compose was officially released
What is ISO/IEC 27001 certification?
ISO/IEC 27001 certification validates that an organisation has implemented a robust Information Security Management System (ISMS). This system provides a systematic approach to managing sensitive company and customer data, protecting it from threats, and ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
ISO/IEC 27001 certification is a globally recognised standard from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) that helps all businesses from start-ups to enterprise organisations manage risks, comply with regulations, and build trust by demonstrating a commitment to security across people, processes, and technology.
Global Community Growth and Education Initiatives
Community growth continued at scale with 142 meetups, over 2200 attendees globally, and new education programmes launched in India and Sri Lanka. New offices in Sweden, Germany and Australia reinforced Umbraco as a truly global platform, now spanning an 18 hour time difference footprint.
Expanding Partnerships and Cloud Adoption
Partners were repeatedly highlighted as a core go to market strength.
Ninety three new partners joined in 2025, the credit system reached its intended usage level, and cloud adoption grew by 50 percent. Umbraco also announced that more business is being done with partners than ever before!
Umbraco and AI: A Platform Built for Choice and Control
AI was the central forward looking theme of 2026’s Umbraco Winter Keynote. Umbraco acknowledged that competitors have been louder on AI, however Umbraco’s approach was instead positioned as more grounded and future proof. Umbraco CMS is presented as a platform for AI rather than a CMS with AI bolted into the core.
AI integration is layered, modular and optional. Customers can choose which models they integrate and define LLM behaviour, allowing users to remain fully in control of AI outputs, simplifying compliance and governance conversations.
Modular AI Features and Real World Applications
AI capabilities now exist throughout Umbraco, both inside and outside the CMS. Feature packages such as prompts and agents sit alongside starter kits, with support for multiple user personas and multiple LLM models per use case. Use cases include image recognition, alt text generation, SEO content assistance, author support and field level automation.
A human is always kept in the loop, and permissions are required before changes are made. AI usage is not monetised, with it instead being used to grow the adoption of Umbraco with a focus on credibility and reliability. All AI implementations remain open source.
Umbraco 17: Rapid Adoption and Product Innovations
On product direction, Umbraco 17 received a strong vote of confidence. Adoption has been faster than any previous version, with more downloads than versions 14, 15 and 16 combined and around 1% of upgrades happening daily. Upcoming platform highlights include global elements, reusable and non routable content, library elements for multi page implementations, improved cloud load balancing and a search abstraction layer moving into the core in future versions. Umbraco also shared a roadmap (available here or by scanning the QR code( for Umbraco 18 and beyond!
Community Leadership and AI Collaboration
Community remained a defining strength throughout the keynote. Umbraco announced AI community teams, an AI advisory board and a new AI category in the 2026 Umbraco awards. Community innovation continues to be treated as Umbraco’s primary R&D engine, with the marketplace, meetups, festivals and hackathons playing a central role. An Umbraco style “AI hackathon” workshop was confirmed in the keynote for Umbraco Spark in March in Bristol.
What is Umbraco Compose?
A major new product launch was Umbraco Compose.
Compose is a data orchestration platform designed to simplify how data from multiple enterprise systems is shaped and delivered into digital experiences. Built on heavy cloud caching for speed, resilience and global scalability, use cases include powering Algolia search entirely from Compose, ingesting product data from sources such as Google Sheets and enabling rapid changes to data sources via webhooks. Front end teams benefit from having all relevant data available without complex integrations. Two pricing levels were announced (Professional and Enterprise) with the key difference being the number of ingestions per month.
Discover more about Umbraco Compose in Umbraco’s product explainer video.
Umbraco for Enterprise: Comprehensive Scalable Solutions
Umbraco for Enterprise was reframed rather than reinvented. While Umbraco has always been enterprise ready, market perception is now catching up. Enterprise packages combine Compose, AI enablement, cloud and enterprise grade support into a single agreement with no hidden costs, aimed at complex high scale digital solutions. Early adoption was highlighted through the Thames Water case study.
What’s next for Umbraco? - Codegarden 2026
The keynote closed with a look ahead to CodeGarden 2026. This Umbraco conference is a pivotal event in Umbraco’s yearly calendar, with the conference returning to Copenhagen on Wednesday 10th June and Thursday 11th June 2026. You can learn more about what’s on at Umbraco Codegarden right here.
What Umbraco’s 2026 Winter Keynote Means for Cold Banana as a Gold Partner
As an Umbraco Gold Partner, we at Cold Banana are uniquely positioned to leverage the innovations highlighted in this keynote. The layered, modular AI capabilities and Umbraco Compose platform allow our Umbraco experts to deliver more advanced, enterprise ready digital solutions for our clients.
Additionally, with the launch of Umbraco's 24 hour global support, ISO 27001 certification and the new partner portal, we further strengthen service reliability, and provide industry leading consultancy to clients adopting Umbraco 17 LTS or enterprise packages.
Overall, the keynote reinforces our ability to combine technical excellence with trusted partnership, helping our clients and you to achieve scalable, future proof CMS and AI driven digital solutions for business operations.
Contact us today to start your journey towards your very own secure and scalable Umbraco powered web solution!
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