The Green Track to Codegarden

The 2026 edition of Codegarden was marked by its highly anticipated return to Copenhagen, after about a decade of being hosted in Odense, Umbraco’s hometown. Coincidence or not, it turned out to be our biggest in-person attendance ever. Over 750 people made the trip from all over the world to gather for a few days in Øksnehallen and its surrounding areas.

This year also marked the launch of the Green Track initiative. Its purpose is to challenge the tech industry's 'fly-by-default' and encourage attendees to make a conscious choice to slow down, trading stressful flights for the train tracks. Choosing the train requires a deliberate shift in how we think about travel time.

While the project originally set out to find ten travelers, in the end, we found seven who were up for the challenge of doing things differently and travelling to and back from Codegarden by train. For their greener choice, Umbraco awarded the attendees with a free Codegarden ticket.

After the event, we asked these participants a few questions about their expectations and actual experiences, and their answers shared a lot of common ground.

Go Green for yourself (and your company)

When mapping out a business trip, the corporate status quo usually optimizes for two things: speed and short-term cost. Flying is often seen as the default because it looks faster on paper. But our Green Track travelers proved that when you look beyond the initial ticket price, making the time for a sustainable journey pays off for both individuals and their companies. It forces us to redefine what a 'productive' work trip looks like.

Relax and be comfy

The most common point praised by our participants was just how relaxing and comfortable the train really is. There is generally no stress about luggage restrictions, customs, or border controls, except for our UK travelers. You can simply arrive shortly before departure, board the train, and get off quickly at your destination. When things do not go as planned, there is often an easy alternative, meaning you can just hop on the next train heading toward your destination.

Additional perks of rail travel include the seats, which are much more spacious and comfortable than those on airplanes. It is also far easier to stretch your legs while on the move. You can bring your own drinks and food on board, or you can buy a meal in the dining cars present on most international trains. One of our participants even traded their long car ride from last year for a train seat this year, and they noted their back is still thanking them!

The gift of time

An important observation made by our participants was that a longer trip is not necessarily a negative thing. In fact, they found several different reasons to love the extra hours.

A longer travel time presents an excellent opportunity to get some work done with a beautiful, scenic backdrop. For other commuters, the extra time was a welcome way to completely unwind and disconnect from daily work tasks before arriving at the event.

For one participant who traveled alongside their coworkers, the longer trip actually transformed into a mini team-building experience. The ride created a great space for them to talk, connect with each other, prepare for the conference, choose which sessions to attend, and discuss what they hoped to get out of the event.

The general consensus was that the participants felt more relaxed and focused upon arrival than if they had flown. They arrived feeling entirely ready to take full advantage of the conference days ahead.

Live the journey

Traveling on land instead of flying gave our attendees a completely different perspective on their trip. First, they could enjoy the landscape and the nature around them, watching the scenery shift as they crossed through different regions and countries. It gave them a greater appreciation for places they might otherwise only see from afar out of an airplane window. They felt they truly lived the journey rather than just observing it as bystanders.

Because international train stations are located right in city centers, those who had long connection times between trains had the perfect opportunity to step out and enjoy a new city. They could go sightseeing, do some shopping, or grab lunch and a drink around town. Our travelers found this much more enjoyable than waiting around inside a crowded airport terminal.

This perk applied to their arrival in Copenhagen, too. Arriving right in the center of the city, close to the venue, removed the need for an extra commute from the airport before checking into their hotels.

The travellers’ experience

Some of our Green Track travelers had already experienced long-distance rail travel, but for others, it was their first time doing something like this. Their overall conclusion was that the train is a highly viable and rewarding alternative to short-haul flights, and the experience has made them more conscious about how they will choose to travel in the future.

Even though things did not go perfectly smoothly for everyone, every single participant enjoyed the ride and would happily choose the tracks again. They saw the transit as an essential part of the conference experience, rather than just a logistical way to get to the venue. For them, Codegarden started the moment they stepped onto the train.

Go Green for the planet

As you can see, train travel is beneficial for individuals and teams, but it is also wonderful for our planet. Umbraco is committed to addressing the sustainability challenges inherent to the tech industry. You can read about how Umbraco tackles these environmental impacts in our annual Impact Reports.

The Green Track initiative originally came from the Umbraco Sustainability Community Team and fits perfectly into these ongoing green efforts. By encouraging people to make a deliberate choice to travel sustainably, the team hopes to motivate more people to consider rail travel and gradually shift old habits.

It is a highly rewarding shift that creates a concrete, positive impact on your carbon footprint. According to the detailed calculations performed by the Sustainability Community Team, the participants of this year’s initiative traveled over 17,000 kilometers return from six different countries, saving a combined of almost 1.5 tonnes of carbon compared to flying.

The combined emissions from their train travel amounted to almost 600 kilograms* of CO2 on a grid-mix basis, whereas if they had flown from their closest airports, the estimated emissions would have reached over 2 tonnes.** That means choosing the rails resulted in over 70% fewer emissions.

From Green Track to Next Year's Journey

Umbraco is known as the friendly CMS, so it feels only natural to let that friendliness ripple down to the planet. We know that more than half of all Codegarden attendees come from the UK and continental Europe, and many of them already travel by land to the conference. Thank you so much for doing that!

We see a huge potential in encouraging even more attendees to take the train or organize carpools so we can collectively improve the carbon footprint of our beloved conference. Why not take inspiration from our Green Track travelers and consider taking the train to Codegarden next year?

If you want to challenge the status quo and join the movement, you can start thinking right now about how to get your next Codegarden by land. A great way to prepare is to look up rail routes from your home city and talk to your company about turning the journey into a productive, collaborative experience. Make sure to keep an eye out for when the Sustainability Community Team opens up applications for the next round of green travelers. We hope to see you on the tracks soon!

* For rail CO2 emission calculations, we used ecopassenger.org. This method utilizes grid-mix calculations based on the electricity physically present in each country's grid along the route.

** For flight CO2 calculations, we used the Ecologi flight calculator (ecologi.com/flights), which captures full climate impact including altitude emissions and non-CO2 effects.