Planning for Athens: Our 10 picks for Drupal Developer Days 2026
After more than two decades in journalism, Alison now collaborates with Annertech's clients to ensure that their content is the best it possibly can be.
The countdown to Drupal Developer Days is officially on. This year, the community is heading to the historic city of Athens for a week of contribution, deep-dive sessions and, of course, a healthy dose of Greek sunshine.
At Annertech, we’ve always been big believers in the power of the Drupal community. We aren't just attending this year – we’re right in the thick of it. With our very own Bill Seremetis and Dimitris Kritsotakis on the organising committee, the event feels particularly close to home for us.
We are also thrilled to be the official coffee and tea sponsors for the event, because we know that the best code is usually powered by a great brew. Plus we have four team members who are presenting sessions!
Whether you’re interested in the cutting edge of AI, the future of frontend or the nuances of accessibility, the schedule is packed with talent. To help you navigate the programme, we asked a few Annertechies which sessions have made it on to their “must-see” list.
Our recommended sessions
1. A future without juniors
Recommended by Petr Illek, Frontend Developer
This session addresses the potential crisis in the talent pipeline and how the industry must adapt to support new developers.
“I'm a member of the Czech junior.guru community, helping juniors on their way to becoming developers,” says Petr.
“We are discussing the current situation so I'm interested in other input from different countries and communities.”
2. From 20 seconds to 500ms: An autopsy of a Drupal optimisation
Recommended by Dimitris Kritsotakis, Backend Developer
Site speed is important for SEO and the user, especially with the fast pace of life. Sites with a lot of content are an everyday concept and with this session we can understand how to improve the visitor experience (UX) to our clients' websites.
3. React meets Drupal’s Single Directory Components
Recommended by Bill Seremetis, Tech Lead
Focusing on the intersection of modern frontend frameworks and Drupal core features, this talk explains how to embed interactive React components within SDCs. It promises to be an excellent deep dive into keeping themes lightweight while maintaining high interactivity.
4. Model Context Protocol (MCP) server
Recommended by Tony Barker, Frontend Developer
While the schedule is packed, Tony is keeping a close eye on the emergence of the MCP server module.
“It's really hard to pick which sessions to attend. There are lots of powerful new modules and features on the agenda. One that I am interested in learning about is the MCP server module under development to hear about its capabilities and roadmap directly from the maintainers.”
5. Tab traps, focus fails and ARIA fixes: real Drupal accessibility challenges
Recommended by Karen Leech, Account Manager
Presented by Maria Young, this session moves beyond the basics of alt text and headings to tackle the complex interactive accessibility issues developers face every day.
"I attended Maria's session at DrupalCamp England in Salford and it was brilliant, an approachable and clear explanation – go to it!" says Karen.
Vibe Coding Competition 2026
The Athens Vibe Coding Competition is set to take place on 23 April during Drupal Developer Days, where three selected finalists will build a complete application live on stage using AI tools.
Organised by Frederik Wouters, this three-hour event challenges participants to deliver functional, creative solutions within a high-pressure public environment without any prior knowledge of the assignment.
Call it a hype, call it a trend, whatever you call it, “vibe coding” is here and it’s going to stay. Regardless of whether you participate it’s going to be fun seeing what others do with today's tools.
Let’s see other devs in action!
6. The perfect compromise: balancing image fidelity and performance in Drupal
Recommended by Petr Illek, Frontend Developer
Finding the sweet spot between high-quality visuals and lightning-fast load times is an ongoing challenge for any developer.
Petr notes: “Performance has been one of my interests for a long time – I built the third-fastest website in the Czech Republic. This session sounds like it could provide interesting approaches to getting websites to perform optimally, and I’m looking forward to it.”
7. Stop the stampede: Scaling and defending Drupal in the age of AI scrapers
Recommended by Dimitris Kritsotakis, Backend Developer
With the increase of AI, and the need for training, AI companies start scraping the internet for any useful data. The impact on the hosting services is enormous, even in drupal.org itself. The session will be helpful for all companies, especially Annertech, where we host more than 100 sites for our clients.
8. AI and the open-source community
Recommended by Karen Leech, Account Manager
Antje Lorch explores the societal impacts of AI and how the open-source community can remain healthy and collaborative. Karen highly recommends this one too: “I also saw this session in Salford. Antje challenges assumptions. It’s thought provoking, clearly communicated, well researched – really worth attending."
9. Bringing Drupal to life: a motion designer’s guide for frontend devs
Recommended by Petr Illek, Frontend Developer
This talk explores how to use motion principles to create more engaging and intuitive user interfaces.
“Animations often come with a performance penalty, so I’m interested to see what the options are and how to make the sites a bit more alive,” Petr says.
10. Stop mapping fields by hand: automating Drupal migrations with AI + Migrate API
Recommended by Bill Seremetis, Tech Lead
This session demonstrates how AI can be used to detect patterns in legacy data and generate migration files automatically. It is a must-watch for anyone looking to remove the manual drudgery from complex data migrations.
With the web being over 35 years old and CMSs like Drupal being on the market for 25 years it’s only logical that there are a lot of old websites hanging around. Sometimes upgrading them is not an option.
Even if you built on Drupal 8 then the decisions you made back then are 11 years old! Can you believe that?
Re-organising things is a must, and anything that facilitates migrations is good to have and know.
Annertech sessions
Streamlining development with GitLab CI/CD templates
Backend Developer Dimitris Kritsotakis explores the Drupal Association's powerful CI/CD templates, which provide maintainers with a streamlined, out-of-the-box solution for automated testing and linting. Attendees will learn how to customise and expand these templates to catch deprecations early, ensuring their modules remain secure and stable against core updates.
Read more on the Dev Days site
Migrating messy content to Drupal
Erik Erskine will be sharing practical advice on how to handle unpredictable edge cases during migrations. A Backend Developer and migration specialist, Erik will take attendees on a deep dive into the strategic planning required for a seamless transition, focusing on how to maintain control when the content gets complicated.
Read more on the Dev Days site
Same image, different story: why Drupal needs contextual architecture
Tony Barker and the University of Edinburgh’s Gareth Alexander will be discussing how architectural gaps in Drupal can lead to poor accessibility and editorial decisions.
By exploring how images serve as a symptom of wider architectural issues, Tony and Gareth will demonstrate how we can shift the dial toward a more intuitive, accessible user experience for editors and end-users alike.
Read more on the Dev Days site
Boosting productivity: optimise developer experience across a fleet of projects and people
At Annertech, we have seen a massive shift in productivity by standardising our workflows. It allows us to work smarter and complete high-quality tasks much faster without reinventing the wheel every time we start a new project.
Bill Seremetis’s session will demonstrate how we packed DX (developer experience) tools in a DDEV add-on and how that transformed development for over 110 Drupal projects and 30 developers.
See you in Athens!
With such a diverse range of topics – from the technicalities of AI-driven migrations to the vital human element of supporting junior developers – Athens is shaping up to be an unforgettable event.
Between the high-level sessions and the hallway chats over a fresh coffee, the insights gained at Dev Days always find their way back into the work we do for our clients.
If you are attending, please do come and say hello to the Annertech team. We’d love to hear which sessions inspired you, or simply chat about your latest Drupal project.
Don’t miss the social event on the first night of the event. No better way to get local suggestions and meet old and new acquaintances.
After more than two decades in journalism, Alison now collaborates with Annertech's clients to ensure that their content is the best it possibly can be.
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Are you heading to Drupal Developer Days?
Check out the full schedule to plan your week, and don't forget to follow us on social media for live updates from the ground in Greece. We'll see you at the coffee station!
