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I attended Umbraco Codegarden 2026!

Codegarden was last week in Copenhagen! I was there this time and here are my thoughts about the event. Previous time I attended was in 2023, so I will draw some comparisons to that year. It was a great experience and I left feeling generally excited and inspired. Organization Just like previous time, the event was very well-organized. At Codegarden, you're always well taken care of with lunch and dinner, great instructions, a little kick-off at the start of every day and a lot of spatial diversity. You always know what to expect. I was very happy to see that the quiet area was easy to find and it was mentioned at the beginning of the event. The previous time I didn't know that such a quiet area existed and I spoke out about that. It gave me comfort that I knew where to retreat to when I needed to. Additionally, there were many places to stand or sit outside and inside. The event was also a little shorter, which made it more manageable for me. The location was absolutely ideal for the amount of people that attended. There were many attendees (about 700 they said, if I remember correctly), but at no point did the venue feel crowded. I could always easily get to where I wanted to go, there were no long queues and there was always enough seats for all the talks at every stage. Talks I'll admit that, on the previous Codegarden, I had the wrong expectations for the talks. Talks are obviously aimed at specific target audiences and I don't belong to all of them. Some talks aim to inform, while others aim to inspire. Stories are not tutorials. Also, sometimes a talk doesn't teach you something new, but simply validates what you were already doing. So it was this time too. My focus is currently shifting slightly away from coding and more towards collaboration and I am looking for inspiration on how to deliver better software faster. I specifically wanted to attend Debugging Teams: What High-Performing Developer Teams Do Differently, because it seemed relevant to me. Although I was hoping for a deep analysis in development process and teamwork strategies, I ended up learning about the importance of trust and of sharing the "what", "how" and "why" of what we do. It surely gave me something to think about. I listened to Building Resilient Umbraco Integrations. A more tutorial-style demonstration with insightful information about what you need to think about when integrating with external services. The presentation included concrete code examples that gave concrete solutions to the presented problems. I personally already knew all of it, but it was nice to see anyway, because it confirms that I'm already doing it right. A special mention goes to Semira Allen and Jason Wodicka with their talks Drowning in Details: Turning TechTalk Into Everyday Language and How (not) to mess up everything. Their talks were incredibly engaging and they were a joy to listen to. I had a good laugh and they were each inspiring in their own ways. Some additional thoughts Copenhagen: The fact that it was in Copenhagen was what made me consider it again. I am not big on traveling abroad and the trip to Odense and back was seriously daunting. Being able to get there with just the airplane made the whole trip so much better! AI: I haven't mentioned AI in this blog. That's because I find the ethics of the application of AI at the moment very questionable. I am still working on forming a well-informed opinion. Umbraco and the community have showcased some very impressive work with AI. Umbraco awards: In case you didn't know it yet: we were nominated for an Umbraco award for "Accessibility and Security"! Even though we didn't win the award, I believe that our submission was still the best. The winning solution had a more visible approach to accessibility, but we can show off a real certification of accessibility with end-user testimonies to back it up. The nomination is a nice validation of my team's hard work. Umbraco in the bigger picture? Right now I am learning from people like Dave Farley, Emily Bache and Derek Comartin about better software development practices. Some of it is more about architecture and some of it is about collaboration and process. I feel like these topics deserve more attention in the Umbraco community. I need a talk named How I upgraded my mid-size web agency from feature branch and PR drag to real CI/CD. Maybe I get to give this talk myself one day, who knows. Conclusion It was a great event, and I'm very happy that I could be there. If it's like this again next year, then I will be eager to attend. Thank you Umbraco for everything!

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Codegarden 2026: A Week in Copenhagen I Won't Forget

Justin reflects on an unforgettable week at Codegarden 2026 in Copenhagen, where he was recognised as an Umbraco MVP, invited on stage during the keynote to demo his AI Log Analyser package, and won the AI Package Award.

My First Umbraco Codegarden: More Than Stickers and T-Shirts

After my blog was recently featured on umb.fyi — thanks to Matt Brailsford for that — I felt like I also owed the community a proper write-up about my very first Codegarden experience.Because honestly, after finally attending for the first time, I completely understand why people keep talking about it long after the event is over.I’ve been building with Umbraco since version 4—that takes me back to 2012 or maybe 2013. After all those years, I finally made the pilgrimage: my first Codegarden. And wow, I get it now. I see why people talk about this thing like it’s some annual family reunion you can’t miss, not just a conference. All the stories you hear—about the talks, the people, those late nights that blur into early mornings—they're all real. Still, the heart of it isn’t just scavenging for stickers or filling your suitcase with t-shirts. It’s something deeper.What really struck me—and it hit pretty much as soon as I walked through the doors—is that sense of belonging. Suddenly you realize you’re a piece of something much bigger than just a CMS, a project, or a logo. You’re dropped right into the Umbraco community, and it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in that feeling.

Diagram and NATP Win Best Enterprise Solution at the 2026 Umbraco Awards

We’re excited to share that the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) website, designed and developed by Diagram, has been named Best Enterprise Solution at the 2026 Umbraco Awards.

Nominated for an Umbraco Solution Award

Feeling incredibly proud to have been nominated for an Umbraco Solution Award this year!

CodeGarden-talk: Hybrid Cache changes everything

I recently spent some time looking closer at the new HybridCache implementation in Umbraco to prepare for my presentation at CodeGarden 2026, and the short version is this: it changes more than just the cache layer. Historically, Umbraco has been very good at keeping published content available in memory. That has made many common developer patterns feel cheap and convenient. Things like traversing content trees, using `.Children()`, `.Descendants()` and resolving references have often just worked without us thinking too much about the cost. With HybridCache, that mental model changes. The cache is still there, but not everything necessarily lives in memory all the time. The big win is scalability The reason for this change is very easy to understand when looking at large Umbraco installations. Keeping everything in memory can work beautifully for small and medium-sized sites, but it becomes painful when a site has hundreds of thousands of pages, many languages, or very large content structures. Startup time, memory usage and hosting constraints can become real problems. HybridCache helps by reducing the memory footprint and making startup faster. Instead of loading everything into memory, Umbraco can seed important content and load other content when needed. That is a big architectural improvement. The cost did not disappear The interesting part, at least for me as a developer, is that the cost did not vanish. It moved. Some operations that used to feel almost free can now become more expensive, especially on larger sites. Traversing a large tree, filtering over many children, or resolving many references may trigger more cache lookups or database access than before. That does not mean HybridCache is bad. Quite the opposite. But it does mean we need to be more intentional about how we build things like menus, listings, sitemaps and search-driven pages. Use the right tool for the job One of my main takeaways is that we should stop treating the published content cache as the answer to everything. For search and filtering, Examine is often a much better fit. For menus, footers and repeated structures, runtime cache or prebuilt DTOs can be a good option. For sitemaps, adding the right data to the index (e.g. URLs) can be much more scalable than traversing the whole content tree. So the practical message is simple: measure, observe, and choose the right approach based on what the page actually needs to do. HybridCache gives Umbraco a better foundation for large sites, but it also makes performance patterns more visible. And honestly, that is probably a good thing. Download the slides I’ve shared the full slide deck from the presentation if you want to dig into the examples, benchmarks and diagrams in more detail. Download the slides

Codegarden: What to bring (2026 edition!)

Wow, hasn't time flown?! This weekend I'll be boarding my plane to Denmark ahead of Codegarden 2026 so it's about time we thought about packing our bags! But what to bring? If you've not been before, or if you're forgetful like I am, I've written you a packing list...

Umbraco OpenID Connect example with lightweight external members

The Umbraco OpenID Connect example has been updated to Umbraco 17.4.2 with support for lightweight external members . This stores members from an external provider as a minimal record instead of a full content entity.

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Why 2026 Is Finally the Year I'm Going to Codegarden

Some things just hang around on your bucket list forever. You tell yourself, “maybe next year,” but you never actually get around to it. For me, that’s always been Codegarden.I’ve been working with Umbraco since version 4—so, we’re talking 2012 or 2013. That’s over a decade of projects, bug fixes, and late-night “why is this still broken?” moments. But I’ve never packed a bag and headed to Copenhagen for the biggest Umbraco event on the planet. Not once. Until now.

In-memory Umbraco Search

How to run Umbraco Search purely in-memory.