Summary of Drupal Dev Days 2026

Authored on

03/06/2026

Changed

03/06/2026

Test all the things!

After a reminder on the necessity of testing and the different types of tests, the various existing tools for each test type were reviewed.

Ranging from code quality tools to functional tests, end-to-end tests, accessibility tests, performance tests, and deployment tests.

Most of these tools can be added to a DDEV environment via the extension https://github.com/Metadrop/ddev-aljibe/

Keynote Session: "Lessons Learned from 5 Years of ECA"

A very inspiring keynote by Jürgen Haas.

treat every piece of feedback as a gift
for a product, focusing on UX is essential

Mago - format, lint and analyze your PHP code

The first time I heard about Mago was in passing on a slide during the "Don't be afraid: goto hell" presentation at Drupalcamp Grenoble 2026. And again two weeks later, here at Drupal Dev Days, but this time in a dedicated presentation.

After a reminder of the value of code analysis and linting tools and a rundown of those currently in use:

PHP CS
PHP CBF
PHPStan

Mago was presented, with the following advantages:

code analysis, formatting, and linting in a single tool.
execution speed, being written in Go.

The only downside is that there is no plugin system or configuration for adjusting linting and formatting rules.

Where PHPCS and PHPStan are extensible and easily configurable, Mago is very opinionated in how it formats code.

Here is the Coder issue to discuss how to integrate Mago while avoiding conflicts with PHPCS in particular.

Stop Mapping Fields by Hand: Automating Drupal Migrations with AI + Migrate API

Presentation of the AI Content Migrate module.

Revamp Transactional Email in Drupal Core

I missed the first 10–15 minutes of the presentation.

The substance of the talk was very interesting, highlighting the limitations of Core's email API, which is too limited, forcing each module to develop its own solution and creating interoperability issues between modules. Integrating Symfony's Mailer component would provide a solid standard to build on.

During the Q&A, the following question was asked: "Why is this topic not moving as fast as initiatives like Canvas, Drupal CMS, or AI?" I loved Berdir's response, which was to point out that the three examples cited are not Core initiatives.

Display Builder, the HTMX-powered visual builder

Once again, a presentation by Pierre of the Display Builder module, this time in the main amphitheatre, on stage. A keynote-level presentation.

Présentation Display Builder Drupal Dev Days 2026 — © Drupal Dev Days 2026

Supercharge Your Drupal Queues with Symfony Messenger

Presentation of Symfony's Messenger component and how to use it.

I enjoy Luca Lusso's presentations on Symfony components, I had found his talk on autowiring very thorough.

In the same vein as the Mailer component, I asked whether a roadmap already existed to integrate this component directly into Core, which would allow the Batch and Queue APIs to be replaced.

Once again, a precise answer from Berdir on the fact that replacing these APIs is not straightforward, as functionality must still be provided for sites that do not offload their queue to an external system, and that Messenger relies heavily on triggering via crontab or cron directly, an aspect not necessarily controllable for all Drupal sites.

In any case, it was good to see people taking an interest in Core APIs that have evolved relatively little compared to the rest, with the aim of modernizing them and, where possible, replacing them with existing libraries to move ever closer to open standards, the famous "Getting off the island".