Three Years of UMB.FYI, and a Second Pulse Check

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Last October, alongside UMB.FYI’s second birthday, I published the first Pulse Check. At the end of it was a short watchlist of things I thought might shape the year ahead: v17 as the version that would finally get people moving onto the new backoffice, AI as a rising tide, and integrations as a theme to keep an eye on.

A year is a long time in Umbraco, so it was fun to check back in. Looking at this year’s data, all three held up.

AI Arrived in Earnest

It’ll be no surprise that AI was the big story. It was the top trending tag for both HQ and the community this year. What stood out to me is how quickly it moved from talk to things you can actually install. HQ shipped Umbraco AI and Automate, the MCP server became part of people’s everyday tools, and the Marketplace grew a real AI category for the first time.

Comparing Is the Fun Part

The first Pulse Check could only tell you where things stood. This one can also tell you how they moved, which is the part I’ve been most looking forward to:

  • 📦 New packages jumped from 99 to 478, with v17 support close to universal.
  • 🗓️ Meetups rose from 105 to 137, and DevRel tells me attendance grew by 39%.
  • 🔐 Security advisories rose from 17 to 23, so patching on a schedule matters more than ever.
  • ✍️ Fewer people published this year, but a smaller, busier core carried the conversation.

Not every number tells a simple story. The package jump, for example, is partly authors catching up with v17 and partly a few very busy publishers releasing in waves. That’s what I enjoy about doing this, the numbers give you a place to start digging, but there’s usually more to it once you do.

👉 Read the UMB.FYI Pulse Check 2025-2026 👈

Three Years In

UMB.FYI turned three on the 4th of October. It’s still the same idea it started as, a weekly round-up of what the community is making, but each year the archive behind it gets more useful. It’s now a record I can look back on and compare against, and that’s only possible because so many of you keep writing, building, organising and sharing.

So thank you. As before, the report ends with a short watchlist of things I think might shape the year ahead, so let’s see how this one holds up.

Until next time 👋