It’s the thick of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but the temperature is running hot at Umbraco – where the open source CMS just broke the ice with its Winter Keynote.

It was buzzworthy on multiple levels. CEO Mats Persson, VP of Developer Relations Emma Burstow, and CTO Filip Bech-Larsen were on deck to deliver some exciting updates via the forum, and that’s precisely what they did.

The Winter Keynote brought several key topics and initiatives into focus, including Umbraco's profitability, a new portal for managing partner credits and streamlining transactions, and additional core updates that are coming down the pipe in Umbraco 18 – which is tentatively scheduled for release in June of 2026.

A group of people sitting in chairs

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

(Left to right) Mats Persson, Emma Burstow, and Filip Bech-Larsen. Source: LinkedIn

But there were two big announcements on tap: First, Umbraco’s latest advancements with AI – appropriately dubbed Umbraco.AI – took center stage, introducing new functionality with some additional out-of-the-box goodies.

As Filip framed, Umbraco is acting as a “rock solid” foundation amidst the often chaotic change and acceleration in AI. Much of the forthcoming innovation is being realized by the team’s implementation of MCP via community-member-turned-staffer Phil Whittaker. For example, using its MCP server, users can harness agents for a host of tasks.

“With these new building blocks, you can choose exactly how, how much, and where you would like to use AI in Umbraco,” he said. “And of course, you can also use Umbraco in AI, via our MCP server and in your coding agents, where our new ‘skills’ will let coding agents write great Umbraco code even as we continue to move fast.”

BTW: We have a podcast episode coming up on this very topic with both Phil and Philip (fear not, we keep the redundant naming straight). Stay tuned as we dig deeper into Umbraco.AI and what it means for the community and enterprises.

Umbraco Compose is live

The other big news was the unveiling of Umbraco Compose for general availability. I’ve been following the evolutionary track of Compose since it was first announced at Codegarden back in June of last year.

As Filip says, it’s “composable for real,” and in his words, an awesome product that’s fun to use. Compose is a SaaS product that’s purposefully designed to save developers time when integrating a range of technologies within composable digital experience platforms. It’s also the first product launched by Umbraco that can be used entirely independently of its open source .NET CMS platform.

“Umbraco Compose answers the question, ‘How do you really do composable and actually succeed?’” Filip explained. “We've heard about the ‘composable regret’ people are talking about, and all the promises of composable are not really happening."

A group of men standing together

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

This was a topic that I dug into with CEO Mats Persson during a lively webinar in November called Can We Ever Get Composable Without Complexity? It goes deep into some of the prevailing assumptions about composable stacks, the realities of “composable regret,” and the potential for orchestration to provide a panacea for some of the woes with managing this level of integration. You can register to watch it here on demand.

You’re the composer with Compose

That’s the pitch – and the rhapsody of Umbraco Compose is a clean, composable architecture that combines and connects all your tools and services in what amounts to a symphonic orchestra. The sheet music reads as scalable and future-proof, giving you confidence that the song will keep playing in the right key.

Orchestration has long been viewed as the salve for the painful topology of disconnected tools. And while MACH architecture and open patterns promised significant benefits, the reality of combining technologies to create a composable digital experience platform has often required a custom integration layer. Compounding this, data also needed the right structure to allow it to flow between systems, and this created a swarm of complexity and arduous development.

This is where Umbraco Compose demonstrates its value, providing a standardized method for structuring, ingesting, and delivering data from multiple sources, from CMS to DAM to ERP.

A diagram of a company

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Umbraco website

E-commerce operations is actually a great use case, and according to Umbraco’s Staff Product Manager, Lasse Fredslund, the benefits are instantly clear when creating a product landing page. Umbraco Compose provides a standardized tool to pull in product specifications from the PIM, images from the DAM, prices from the ERP system, and marketing content from the CMS – making the entire journey faster and easier.

“Previously, this could involve multiple custom integrations that demand ongoing maintenance and eat into developer resources,” he said. “Alternatively, organizations are bound to a suite approach, which limits their flexibility.”

The unification of these disparate systems is the key. Everything you need to assemble a page – your product, pricing, marketing, and image data – is ported into Compose using ingestion and delivery APIs. GraphQL, the de facto query language for modern APIs, acts as a translation backbone, providing combined data as a unified output that’s readily accessible to things like generative AI tools.

As Filip explained, GraphQL ensures that Umbraco Compose only delivers the data you need, thus speeding up the load time of frontend applications. This has a net impact on performance for site visitors, but it also has the potential to improve rankings for SEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). Oh, and less is more, reducing energy consumption and environmental impact – which is good for the planet.

“On top of this, with Umbraco Compose, you can connect any digital tool or technology to GraphQL, allowing faster adaptation to new business requirements, trends, and customer needs,” Filip conveyed enthusiastically. “With content collected, structured, and exposed through a unified Graph QL layer, Compose becomes your perfect starting point for your AI journey.”

Delivering real value for developers and organizations

There are huge benefits to Umbraco Compose. First, by removing the overhead of maintaining custom backend-for-frontend integrations, developers will have more time to focus on critical infrastructure or urgent initiatives – such as making product data discoverable and usable by agentic AI.

That last part is key, especially as more organizations focus on deploying agentic strategies in 2026 while keeping a weather eye on ROI and value. 2025 proved to be a tipping point for AI agents, but only 5% of enterprises actually have these systems in full production – and according to research from Cleanlab, they’re running into persistent issues and failures.

Then, there are the payoffs that true composable solutions can deliver – when done right. With Umbraco Compose, organizations can eliminate the laborious integration workload and data structuring that hinders productivity. At the same time, it can help organizations avoid vendor lock-in, increase flexibility, and readily adopt new technologies like agentic commerce.

As mentioned, Umbraco Compose is a stand-alone SaaS product, which is what unlocks its capabilities. It includes an array of performance-focused features, from webhooks to a global Cloudflare CDN. But there’s also the benefit of seamless integration with Umbraco CMS, which provides out-of-the-box integrations with Compose – including a content picker for connecting data from other sources as if it were stored in the CMS itself. That translates into faster, more streamlined adoption.

Pricing

I have to give it to Umbraco: they have their pricing front-and-center on their product page, and it includes the full host of dimensions for consideration. There are three tiers: Professional, which chimes in at $15,600/year, Enterprise at $62,400/year, and Custom – which directs you to a sales agent.

The plans vary based on the amount of ingestion, the complexity of the GraphQL posture, and the level of support included (and if you’re wondering about that GraphQL variable, Umbraco provides some transparency: it’s the sum of the number of fields returned multiplied by the depth level of the fields).

Obviously, this isn’t an impulse SaaS buy, and I would recommend a deeper conversation with a solution architect around each of these considerations based on your needs.

The verdict

Umbraco is proving that its innovation – and its open sourceness – are qualified advantages in the current competitive landscape. Not only are they making gains in AI, but their track is enabling organizations to future-proof for their own agentic ambitions.

On that note, they are mindful and intentional regarding their roadmap, making smart decisions that don’t always put them first in market, but yield better long-term results. This is where agentic strategies could benefit from the essential friction of doing AI the right way by playing the long game.

As Mats Persson eluded during the Winter Keynote, the company is growing in the right direction as more enterprise customers come into the fold. This includes notable brands like the Carlsberg Group, Renault UK Group, and Rubbermaid, which are all hyper-focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences and leveraging a wide range of marketing tools to reach their goals.

Umbraco Compose is a clear signal of the company’s continued focus on innovation. Paired with some inspiring progress in AI, it answers real challenges customers face when threading their siloed technologies to achieve scalable digital experiences. By making this a separate SaaS offering, they are truly embracing a composable posture to power composable solutions – and that translates into meaningful extensibility.

While opening up the field to any stack composition is a clear win, another key benefit is having Umbraco CMS in your recipe. Not only is it a best-of-breed tool, but the native connections with Compose offer a stronger foundation and greater efficiency.

My recommendation: As “The Friendly CMS,” Umbraco is a people-first organization, and that’s where I would start. Umbraco Compose has been a carefully, methodically developed project with a lot of potential, and if you're struggling with this disjointed conundrum, this product deserves a closer look. But having access to sales, support, and engineering resources will be a key advantage. With its SaaS posture, Compose offers a lot of flexibility, but I would tap into Umbraco’s community and partner resources – one of its biggest and brightest assets – to help ensure a successful implementation and sustainable deployment. Their documentation is always top-notch, but again, people make the difference. And from my experience, they are indeed “friendly.”

Upcoming Events

JoomlaDay USA 2026

April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, Florida

Be part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world. Book your seats today.

CMS Summit 26

May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, Germany

The 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 Summit 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 Frankfurt, 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, so book your seats today.

Umbraco Codegarden 2026

June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DK

Join 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. Book your tickets today.

Open Source CMS 26

October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, Netherlands

Join 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. Book your tickets today.

News

Orchestrate and Create: Umbraco Compose Streamlines Integration of New Technologies and Agentic AI