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digital experience platform Article

How to Thrive at 25: As Sitecore Charts an AI Future, Community Remains its Greatest Asset     

matt-garrepy

<hr /> As an industry analyst, CMS geek, and all-around digital design nut, I’m fortunate to review and sometimes judge various awards competitions. It’s one of the best parts of my job because I get to look at what people and agencies make – and do it through a number of different lenses. Yes, it often involves a deep dive into architectures, but it also means I get to play with digital experiences. Who doesn’t love exploring an exquisite mobile UI or ogling over a stunning homepage template? There’s simply no replacement for how we – as humans – can be inspired by good design. But when you combine an awards competition with compelling stories about complex migrations and multichannel applications, you get a range of impressive submissions that go beyond just the visual appeal.Kentico has been running its annual <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/discover/kentico-awards-winners/archive">Site of the Year</a> competition since 2017, and I’ve <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/kentico-announces-winners-of-2023-site-of-the-year-awards">covered it in the past.</a> The platform highlights some “swoon-worthy” projects built on Kentico, demonstrating the flexibility and extensibility of what’s possible when partners push the boundaries.The DXP just announced its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/discover/kentico-awards-winners/site-of-the-year-2026">Site of the Year 2026 program</a> last week, offering an updated awards structure that reflects the direction of modern digital experiences. This edition consolidates ten vertical categories into six while introducing a slate of new bonus awards like “Best SaaS Project,” “Best Multichannel Project,” “Best Upgrade Project,” and “Best Migration Project.”There’s one more, and it’s arguably in the spotlight: Kentico has added a “Best Use of AI” award to the roster, the first of its kind from a major category vendor.This is a smart move – and it complements the awards program in an area where many partners and enterprises are doubling down. According to Kentico, the new category will recognize and celebrate the work of brands and teams in deploying agentic and generative AI in production.It also aligns to the capabilities Kentico has been shipping across its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/Redirect.ashx?linkguid=1c0eda97-ac92-42bf-b5fd-5acf9b5ead34&amp;email=matt%40cmscritic.com&amp;hash=be0d1d8f19e0858f5111492f222eca952b1f9d98aaaeebe1c4c04b9dec830ced">Xperience by Kentico</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/Redirect.ashx?linkguid=7bf2d6a7-2052-4f00-b58a-3084ce60c4f1&amp;email=matt%40cmscritic.com&amp;hash=be0d1d8f19e0858f5111492f222eca952b1f9d98aaaeebe1c4c04b9dec830ced">AIRA</a>, and the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/Redirect.ashx?linkguid=57081f58-7b0c-4976-bf1a-bf02cca136d9&amp;email=matt%40cmscritic.com&amp;hash=be0d1d8f19e0858f5111492f222eca952b1f9d98aaaeebe1c4c04b9dec830ced">Agentic Marketing Suite</a>. I recently broke down the platform’s rollout of four specialized agents that operate as a virtual marketing team, and you can <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/meet-the-agents-kentico-fields-an-ai-dream-team-to-win-the-new-game-of-marketing">read my analysis here.</a>"Awards programs should be a mirror of where the industry is actually moving, not where it was two years ago," said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/petrklouda/">Petr Klouda</a>, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Kentico. "Agentic AI is no longer experimental; it is in production, shipping real outcomes for real customers. With Site of the Year 2026, we are putting that work on the leaderboard, alongside the SaaS, migration, and consolidation projects that are reshaping how organizations operate. The partners and customers building this future deserve to be recognized for it." <h3 id="a-new-awards-structure-for-a-changing-industry">A New Awards Structure for a Changing Industry</h3>It goes without saying that AI is rippling across the CMS and DXP toolscape and transforming everything. Still, the value of websites remains steadfast, even as they evolve to serve both humans and agents. Kentico’s Site of the Year competition is an opportunity to celebrate the efforts of the people behind these amazing experiences. It highlights the partners and customers who continue to elevate design and harness Xperience by Kentico to deliver uniquely inspiring results. As AI shifts the horizon, these practitioners are leveraging its capabilities to explore what’s next.The 2026 Site of the Year program introduces three changes to reflect the realities of how leading digital teams are working today. As mentioned, Kentico has consolidated the vertical structure from ten categories to six, clustering industries with a natural alignment. This includes: <ul><li>Government, Associations &amp; Education</li><li>Sport, Entertainment, Travel &amp; Tourism</li><li>Financial Services</li><li>Healthcare</li><li>Industrial Manufacturing</li><li>B2B &amp; Consumer Brands</li></ul>One important change: commerce is no longer a standalone category, and will be evaluated within the industry that each project aligns with. The five new bonus awards hit every vertical and reflect the focus of modern digital experience. This includes agentic and generative AI integration, true SaaS implementations, multichannel and consolidation projects, in-place version upgrades, and migrations from competing platforms. And bonus awards aren’t exclusive, meaning a single project can win both a vertical category and one or more bonus awards. <h3 id="site-of-the-year-2025-set-a-high-bar">Site of the Year 2025 Set a High Bar</h3>You can read my review of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/websites-still-rock-kenticos-2025-site-of-the-year-winners-push-the-boundaries-of-digital-experience">Kentico’s Site of the Year 2025 competition</a>, which featured ten category winners and twenty honorable mentions across financial services, commerce, education, hospitality, healthcare, government, B2B, manufacturing, and nonprofit sectors. Submissions came from North America, EMEA, and APAC.For me, there were certainly some standouts. For example, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/Redirect.ashx?linkguid=2352b3f4-ad18-4695-b4cf-9fea119232c4&amp;email=matt%40cmscritic.com&amp;hash=be0d1d8f19e0858f5111492f222eca952b1f9d98aaaeebe1c4c04b9dec830ced">LeShuttle Freight’s</a> elegant, high-performance, multilingual experience was top-notch. In addition to simple, intuitive navigation, it has a tricked-out, real-time service update that provides critical visibility for time-sensitive logistics. The mobile experience is also lightweight, prioritizing the right elements in the UX. You can also read my review of the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://bobw.co/">Bob W. </a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/Redirect.ashx?linkguid=d26dfe6c-b389-43aa-a623-daa701b4b192&amp;email=matt%40cmscritic.com&amp;hash=be0d1d8f19e0858f5111492f222eca952b1f9d98aaaeebe1c4c04b9dec830ced">Oppenheimer</a> projects, and why they really made the grade. The full list of winners is available on the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/Redirect.ashx?linkguid=e1050167-fe25-4ff7-990d-71fec88be870&amp;email=matt%40cmscritic.com&amp;hash=be0d1d8f19e0858f5111492f222eca952b1f9d98aaaeebe1c4c04b9dec830ced">Kentico Awards page</a>. <h3 id="2026-is-already-taking-shape">2026 is already taking shape</h3>Kentico’s 2026 Site of the Year competition is already underway, with early entries crystallizing the value and impact of its new award categories. According to Kentico, every project that wins Site of the Month automatically qualifies for Site of the Year consideration, and thus far, the projects encompass work that would have been difficult to place in last year's structure. For example, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.integralife.com/">Integra LifeSciences</a>, a global medical technology leader specializing in neurosurgery and surgical solutions, is a model project for the new “Best SaaS Project.” With a hard deadline driven by an impending CMS sunset, Integra worked with Kentico partner <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/bizstream-acquires-refactored-adds-strategic-digital-services-and-headless-cms-accelerator">BizStream </a>to migrate to Xperience by Kentico delivered as SaaS.Additionally, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.tescomobile.com/">Tesco Mobile</a> Ireland, a consumer mobile brand, replatformed from a custom e-commerce build onto Xperience by Kentico. Delivered by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.wearegranite.com/">Granite</a>, the new site features a native phone comparison tool, a bundling and add-on checkout flow, and prepaid top-up functionality.<h3 id="criteria-and-timeline">Criteria and timeline</h3>Kentico’s “Site of the Year” entries are evaluated across four key pillars: <ul><li>Design and user experience</li><li>Content &amp; engagement</li><li>Technical excellence &amp; performance</li><li>Complexity &amp; fuctionality</li></ul>For more granular detail, you can <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/discover/kentico-awards-winners/site-of-the-year-2026">visit the 2026 Awards website.</a>As for the schedule, Site of the Year 2026 follows the Site of the Month–based qualification model that was introduced in 2025. Kentico has a complete timeline on the awards website. Submissions open on January 1st, and the international Kentico judging committee will evaluate finalists in tournament-mode knockout rounds in January 2027. Winners will be announced the first week of February 2027. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3>  <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26"><img style="width:41.96%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/cms-connect-logo-26.jpg" /></a><h4 id="cms-connect-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">CMS Connect 26</a></h4>August 5-6, 2026 – Montreal, CanadaThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Connect brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Montreal, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:35.73%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1778200565145.png" /><h4 id="contentstack-contentcon-2026">Contentstack <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">ContentCon 2026</a></h4>September 30 - October 1, Amsterdam  /  October 27-28, 2026 – ChicagoContentstack’s annual customer conference is the premier event for executives, marketing leaders, and developers to redefine their digital experience strategy. This is your opportunity to step out of the "status quo" and into "elite" status, learning exactly how the world’s most successful brands are using the technology you already own to do the impossible. Enjoy a full day of interactive workshops, certifications, and inspirational on-stage sessions designed to help you become an expert on cutting-edge digital strategies and how to turn Contentstack's CMS and adaptive personalization tools into your greatest competitive advantage.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">Book your seats today.</a>

Kentico Opens its Site of the Year 2026 Awards as First Major DXP with a ‘Best Use of AI’ Category

‘Crunch Time’ for AI Visibility: Sitecore’s Acquisition of Scrunch Gives Brands an Edge Beyond AEO

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/soren-stamer">Sören Stamer</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau"> </a>is Co-Founder and CEO of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/coremedia">CoreMedia</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> AI now often sits between your brand and your customer, deciding what it tells them about you. The risk that it misrepresents you, or leaves you out of the answer altogether, is real. If a buyer researching their next purchase asks an AI assistant for a shortlist, and the answer attaches a wrong price to your offering, cites an outdated policy, or names a competitor as the better option, the damage is done before you even notice. There is no page to correct and no customer to email, because the person on the other end never visited your site and never will. The only place to influence it is upstream, in the infrastructure your content lives in.<h3 id="the-cms-has-a-new-job:-trust-infrastructure">The CMS has a new job: trust infrastructure</h3>You cannot police what an AI says about your brand at the moment it speaks. But you can shape what it draws on at the root, in the content the model reads before it ever forms an answer. When an AI decides whether to surface your brand, it does not read a web page the way a person does. It looks for signals in your content:<ul><li>Machine-readability: Is the content explicitly modeled?</li><li>Structure: Are the entities, your products, prices, and policies, clearly defined?</li><li>Consistency: Do the claims align across pages, channels, and markets?</li><li>Freshness: Is the content current and up to date?</li><li>Provenance: Is the source authoritative and traceable?</li></ul>How content is structured directly shapes whether an AI can find it, interpret it, and trust it enough to cite you. If your price says one thing on a product page and another in a PDF, an AI cannot tell which is true, so it trusts neither. Meeting these signals in practice means turning marketing prose scattered across sources into defined fields, managed centrally: product attributes, pricing components, and policy blocks an agent can read directly. Get the data right, and it flows straight to brand trust, conversions, and revenue. Get it wrong, and the AI works with whatever it can find and repeats the mess across every answer it gives about you, if it includes you at all. That is why content infrastructure now belongs at the board level, because you want to stay in control of how your brand is represented by AI agents.<h3 id="content-governance-is-mission-critical,-and-ai-makes-it-more-so">Content governance is mission-critical, and AI makes it more so</h3>Governance is the framework that makes sure the right rules are in place and applied: what content can exist, who can change it, how it is structured, and what needs approval before it goes out.It often used to be a checkpoint at the end: route the content through legal, compliance, and marketing, then ship. That worked while people wrote everything, at human speed and human volume. AI changes both: it produces a thousand variants in the time a person reviews one, personalized in real time for every audience and channel, and it does it without judgment. On its own, the model generating that content is context-blind, a confident guesser with no idea what your prices are today or what your brand would never say. At that speed and scale, a person checking each piece after the fact has no chance of keeping up. The rules can no longer live in a review step at the end; they have to be enforced by the system as the content is generated:<ul><li>Brand rules, so it sounds like you, not the internet's average.</li><li>Live proprietary data, so it quotes accurate prices, specs, and policies.</li><li>Compliance boundaries, so it never says what you legally cannot.</li><li>Human handoff, so high-risk content gets a person's sign-off before it ships.</li><li>Ongoing checks, so content that goes stale or off-brand gets caught and corrected.</li></ul>People set those rules at the source, and the platform applies them to everything generated against it, and to everything downstream that draws on it, from LLMs to personalization engines to automated campaigns. Get that source right and the advantage compounds quickly: everything built on top of it stays accurate by default. Teams across the organization, from marketing to sales to support, move faster because they work off one centralized source, delivering a consistent experience that humans and AI alike can trust. The human role shifts from polishing words to steering the system, freeing people for what only they bring to the table: taste, judgment, and accountability. Left to itself, AI is generic; it takes a human touch in the process to make a brand worth choosing.<h3 id="what-enterprises-should-demand-from-an-ai-ready-cms">What enterprises should demand from an AI-ready CMS</h3>Every CMS now claims to be AI-ready. Most mean they have added a few features on top: a copilot in the editor, auto-tagging, and a chat box. Those lift productivity, but that’s no longer the differentiator. The mistake is treating AI as a set of add-ons. It is infrastructure, and it only delivers quality results when it works as a system built on a reliable content foundation:<ul><li>One omnichannel content platform as a source of truth that every channel and agent draws on.</li><li>Content structured for machines, not just for human eyes.</li><li>Governance AI can rely on, enforced as content is generated and optimized.</li><li>Workflows that keep humans in control, at AI-velocity.</li></ul>This is what we built the CoreMedia Experience Platform to be: an <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.coremedia.com/content-management-system/ai-powered-cms">AI-first CMS</a>, a centralized content platform for every touchpoint with governance at its core. Make your CMS that trust infrastructure, not just a publishing tool, and that is where you win the customer the AI is choosing for. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3>  <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26"><img style="width:41.96%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/cms-connect-logo-26.jpg" /></a><h4 id="cms-connect-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">CMS Connect 26</a></h4>August 5-6, 2026 – Montreal, CanadaThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Connect brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Montreal, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:35.73%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1778200565145.png" /><h4 id="contentstack-contentcon-2026">Contentstack <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">ContentCon 2026</a></h4>September 30 - October 1, Amsterdam  /  October 27-28, 2026 – ChicagoContentstack’s annual customer conference is the premier event for executives, marketing leaders, and developers to redefine their digital experience strategy. This is your opportunity to step out of the "status quo" and into "elite" status, learning exactly how the world’s most successful brands are using the technology you already own to do the impossible. Enjoy a full day of interactive workshops, certifications, and inspirational on-stage sessions designed to help you become an expert on cutting-edge digital strategies and how to turn Contentstack's CMS and adaptive personalization tools into your greatest competitive advantage.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">Book your seats today.</a>

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