Codegarden 2026: Ubuntu

A few months ago, I wrote about my experience at Umbraco Spark 2026. Heading down to Bristol from my home office in rural Lincolnshire was exactly what I needed at the time. Working remotely had left me feeling pretty disconnected from the wider industry, and Spark gave me a much-needed reminder of why I enjoy software development in the first place. If Spark was the ignitor, CodeGarden 2026 was the gasoline.

To put this year into context, I have to look back at CodeGarden 2025. Honestly, I went into it as a massive sceptic. I attended along with a colleague whom I latched onto for moral support, keeping mostly to myself. When the Umbraco rabbit walked past offering high-fives, my immediate thought was, "Do I really have to deal with a giant rabbit right now?"

I just didn't get the hype, I was an outsider. The cheering and intense community enthusiasm left me completely bewildered. I was physically in Odense, but mentally, I hadn't left my desk in Lincolnshire.

This year was different. Walking into CodeGarden 2026, I noticed my whole attitude had shifted. Instead of lurking at the back and avoiding eye contact, I found myself actively looking out for the rabbit just to get a high-five.

The change wasn't just down to the good vibes left over from Spark. It came from a concept I’ve been dwelling on a lot lately: Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is an African philosophy often translated as "I am because we are." It's the idea that our growth, identity, and success are deeply connected to the people around us. In software development, it’s incredibly easy to forget this. We spend hours staring at screens, dealing with bugs in isolation, and falling into the trap of thinking it's a solitary job. But at CodeGarden, that philosophy felt incredibly real. I knew I was becoming a better version of me because the community brought that out. Introvert me was becoming, dare I say, a little extroverted. 

Open source doesn't work in a vacuum. The packages, the documentation, the forum answers. They rely entirely on collective effort. My own progress over the last year hasn't just come from grinding away at my desk; it’s happened because of the shared knowledge and support of the community. I’m a better developer because of the collective effort around Umbraco.

Throughout the week, the conversations went beyond basic API updates or technical features. People were talking about shared struggles and solving problems together. Getting over my career slump wasn't actually about learning a new framework; it was about reconnecting with people. Every quick chat over coffee or spontaneous open-space session made it clear that we aren't just isolated developers working on separate codebases. I lost momentum earlier in my career because I stayed cooped up in my own world. I'd forgotten the value of community.

That's my personal lesson from this year, but I know you're probably here for the actual event recap. Here is how the week went down:

The journey started from my wonderful in-laws house in Northampton. I travelled down from Sleaford the night before to make the journey to Stansted easier for myself. After a few small tasks in the morning and some final checks with the Spinbox team I headed down to the airport early. 

I am quite risk averse, in my head I think traffic, accident, no parking spaces, long security line, bags are going to get flagged. So getting to the airport early was a comfort. Arriving without too much of a hitch I logged in to do some final work while waiting for my flight

Due to flight delays I got into CPH Airport quite late. By the time I passed through immigration it was too late to take a train so the Metro it was. This meant it was a 20 minute walk to the hotel. Old me would have been fuming, but new me realised nothing I could of done would of changed the outcome. So feeling safe walking in a city on my own at 1am, I took in the sights and sounds in on a slow an steady walk.

I still don't know if it is ok to cross the road in Denmark if its late at night, there's no cars but the man on the light is red.

After catching up with my boss Rehan in the morning, arriving and giving my high 5 to the rabbit, I went into Day 1 with the talks I already knew I wanted to see:

• Key note

  • The keynote had a slide that triggered something for me. I had recently seen a short/reel/tiktok with something along the lines of

    "I wish you knew you were in the good ol days when they were happening, and not after without realising".

    I often feel I missed out a lot in life for various reasons, however now really does feel like we are in the good days. The early days of something new and exciting with the rapid advances in AI. 

    Another part of the keynote was when Umbraco Automate was announced. As a self described cheapskate, being announced as free and for the community this was a bonus too.

• Vibecoder to AI Engineer

  • My key takeaway from Matt's talk was token management through structured and linked 'CLAUDE.MD' files as well as taking responsibility for the code you commit. If Uncle Claude writes the code and I commit it, I am assuming responsibility for that code. 

• It's elemental; reuse your content

  • I had seen some of this demoed back at Spark 2026 but it was great to see it again and the direction it is going. Being about to create reusable content via elements and eventually reusable blocks will be a game changer for content editors and clients. As mentioned in back in March, I really like the awareness of creating a visual language of representing what content is shared and what isn't.

• AI as your sidekick

  • Barbara's talk was interesting to see how other people are using AI day to day. I could share some of the frustrations of it getting it wrong as well as the wow moments when it surprises you. I have those moments where I go from "I hate AI, it got it wrong and now I have to do it myself anyway." to ""Wow, this just saved me probably 1 to 2 hours of work. My takeaway from Barbara's excellent talk was to onboard your AI like you would a new employee. Don't expect it to know what you want or how your work. 

• Umbraco in AI

  • It is always great to see Umbraco and their AI strategy. This time around it was Umbraco in the AI space focussing around MCP. Phil demoed a really great use case where you could take the MCP server, the UI Library and get a working mock-up in Claude Design. Both Paul Seal and I spoke about it the next day and the potential this unlocks for mocking up a working prototype for clients. The progress on the back office skills has come a long way too and I was eager to bring this back to the team at Spinbox

At Codegarden, you always hear about the famous(or infamous?) Bingo night and the shenanigans that close off day 2 however I wasn't prepared for the Awards Dinner to be so entertaining.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, I was completely shattered from running on about five hours of sleep. I was dangerously close to skipping the Awards Dinner just to crash in my room, but I pushed myself to get out my shell.

The wonderful team from Gibe Digital essentially adopted me as one of their own for the night. Sitting with Cat Todd, Steve Temple, and the rest of the Gibe crew turned the evening into a spectacle I won't forget anytime soon.

The entertainment was exactly the kind of pure chaos and joy people talk about. From watching a makeshift Spice Girls reunion to a Peaky Blinders stage re-enactment, the whole room was in stitches. But even with all the madness going on around us, I still managed to have some really great conversations with Cat and the Gibe team. It was the perfect mix of absolute conference chaos and real connection, and I’m so glad I didn't miss it.

After managing a somewhat better evening of sleep I went into Day 2 with a fresh mind. As before I already had the talk's I wanted to see.

• Accelerating Package Development with Umbraco 17 automation (Paul Seal)

  • Paul talk was his journey on removing manual steps from package development and how a life event can make you find new ways of doing things when restricted. The automation was done using Github actions, the Backoffice Management API and playwright.

• AI in Umbraco (Matt Brailsford)

  • Matt's talk walked up through an example of publishing podcasts in Umbraco and automating transcription using AI. What was really cool, if anyone still uses that word, was seeing the solution evolved each iteration eventually leveraging the new Triggers and Actions in Umbraco Automate.

While all the talks up until this point were great and excellent, it was at this point I was feeling a little "AI-ed" out if I am honest and I think a lot of people were. I took a little bit of a break in the Dev Rel area and found myself completing the Codegarden puzzle with Steve Temple. We couldn't let Lottie down! Sitting there and doing the puzzle really gave me time to sit back with my thoughts for a while.

After completing the puzzle and waiting for the next talks I had a catchup with Ben Szymanski whom I had met in 2025. We discussed how his package development was going and the effort the community docs team put in to get the documentation up to date. A huge congratulations for his first MVP award.

The last talks of the day I watched was:

• Migrating three large websites built on Kentico, Wordpress and Webflow into one Umbraco platform(Daniel Horn)

  • It was interested to hear how Daniel and his team took on this project. A powerful message I took away from this talk was:

  • "It's easy to move content. It's much harder to move the people who depend on it."

• Automate All the Things: Building & Evolving Umbraco Sites with AI Agents (Shannon Thompson)

  • This was another talk that was great to see AI working live building a site from scratch with AI and Umbraco. Its always brave doing live demo's especially with AI and how unpredictable it can be sometimes. However the talk and demo went off without a hitch and I walked away from the talk with a new tool to talk to the Spinbox team about when I got back

Just before the Dinner Rehan and myself were invited to take a picture a long with other various partners. I had a whole bottle of sparkling wine and no one to share it with but that's when my highlight of Day 2 happened. I had the privilege of meeting Jenny Kitchen and Calvin Davis from Yoyo Design. We had an great conversation about life over our bottles of bubbly and were gutted when we weren't to sit together for the Dinner(Rehan and I didn't know you could reserve seats :D).

I will leave the shenanigans out and leave it to your imagination however I was one away from winning one of the bingo prizes which I am both chuffed and salty about.

The last day of Codegarden week featured a hackathon, a boat trip, and lunch at Warpigs on the agenda. Due to the uncertainty of airport security and immigration, I decided to skip the boat trip just to make sure I caught my flight.

This was my first official hackathon. Back at Umbraco Spark, it baffled me how a group of devs could put a package together so quickly. We only had three hours this time, but I still learned loads about spinning up quick dev environments to get going. 

The highlight of the day, and arguably my whole Codegarden experience, was when the legendary man himself Paul Seal sat next to me at the hackathon. We’d briefly crossed paths earlier in the week, but we were both busy and in his defence he had a talk to prep for. After chatting for a bit, we realized we were on the same flight back to the UK and agreed to buddy up for the day.

I was honestly a bit in shock. Hanging out for a whole afternoon with the guy who taught me how to Umbraco back on v8 felt like a massive privilege. On top of that, we grabbed lunch with Joe Glombek, who inspired me back at Spark and graciously mentioned me in his talk, along with Shannon Deminick. I felt a little out of place at first surrounded by well establish names in the community, but the group welcomed me with open arms. I was no longer that outside from 2025, I felt a sense of belonging.

You’d think a bunch of developers hanging out would just talk tech, but we didn't. We just talked about our lives, our backgrounds, and the events of the week. 

The wait at the airport was long, but Paul and I kept the conversation going about family and holidays, and I even got a front-row demo of his package script writer. Eventually, it was time to part ways for our separate seats and the journey home.

I never really experienced the Codegarden blues before. Partly because at Codegarden 2025 I hadn't quite absorbed all of it. So it was quite a shock to the system.

To soften the blow, I threw on my brand new Umbraco hoodie and went out on a country walk. Sure, it’s June, but I needed the comfort blanket.

It’s a massive contrast. Out on those gravel paths, the frantic rushing between sessions was replaced by the slow crunch of my boots, and the roar of the crowd gave way to just the wind blowing through the crops. But that quiet Lincolnshire countryside was exactly the reset I needed to let the week sink in.

You go to these events expecting to focus entirely on the technical stuff. But walking the perimeter of those empty fields, it hit me why the comedown was so real this year.

CodeGarden 2026 proved to me that the magic of software development isn't just in the code we write, but in the people we build it with. So, to the person in the rabbit costume, thank you for the high-five. And to the Umbraco community, thank you for showing me what Ubuntu truly looks like in action.

If you missed it, the Aftermovie on the Umbraco HQ channel has been published and gives you a peek into how the week went.