At Codegarden, we revealed our latest product: Umbraco Compose. It’s built to support the evolution of digital solutions and the growing need for a standard way to connect content across systems, whether it comes from a CMS, PIM, DAM, ERP, CRM, or elsewhere, and deliver it in a consistent and flexible way. In short, it’s a SaaS tool for composing content from multiple sources into one unified output.
Over the past few years, we’ve added headless capabilities to the CMS through the Content Delivery API, Management API, and webhooks, turning Umbraco into a hybrid CMS. Larger solutions are already being tied together with Umbraco, but when going fully headless, for example, in a composable best of breed setup, many have ended up building a custom BFF (Backend for Frontend) or similar custom integration layer. That can be a tedious and complex task.
That’s why we’re introducing Umbraco Compose: to support composable architectures in a far more streamlined and user-friendly way.
The core components are an ingestion endpoint and a GraphQL Delivery API, backed by a Management API to model and link data sources, trigger webhooks, transform content, debug, and more. The delivery API allows you to query across collections, either as dynamic GraphQL queries or as persisted queries, enabling you to define and restrict endpoints for specific use cases.
All this will eventually be tied together with a UI for managing your Compose projects in the Umbraco Cloud portal.
While Umbraco Compose is a fully standalone product and doesn’t require Umbraco CMS to either feed or consume data, we’ll have integrations ready on day one for Umbraco CMS.
At Codegarden, we demoed how you can sync your data to Umbraco Compose through an integration that uses the same format as the Content Delivery API output.
We also showcased a new low-code/no-code Property Editor Picker that can be connected to Umbraco Compose from within Umbraco CMS. This allows editors to pick and link content from the many data sources available in Umbraco Compose in a very editor-friendly way. In short, some very user-friendly, out-of-the-box linking between Umbraco CMS and Umbraco Compose.
Both integrations will be open-sourced, so you can contribute new ideas or use the code as inspiration if you want to build something more custom.
We expect to have a full commercial offering in early 2026, but applications are already open for a private beta this summer. A limited number of projects will be supported, and their feedback will help shape the final product.
If you’d like to get involved or want to learn more, reach out to us at compose@umbraco.com or visit the teaser product page to apply for the private beta and stay updated.
We’re excited to introduce Umbraco MCP Server, a standardized interface that allows AI tools to read, understand, and perform actions in your Umbraco project via Umbraco’s Management API. With the Umbraco MCP Server, you can connect your preferred AI clients, such as Claude or Cursor, to over 315 endpoints in the Management API, allowing the AI client to interact with your Umbraco backoffice, all while fully respecting Umbraco’s existing permission model and security framework.
We’re currently working on packaging the Umbraco MCP Server with full documentation and practical use cases. We expect a full official release in Q3, 2025. You can already try out Umbraco MCP Server and the endless possibilities it brings to your work in the Umbraco Backoffice by visiting the current source code and setup instructions on GitHub.
Read more about the use cases of Umbraco MCP Server here, or visit umbraco.com for more on Umbraco and AI.
It’s been a big quarter for Umbraco Cloud, with new tools that give you more flexibility, visibility, and control, and even more on the way. From deployment workflows to domain monitoring and a new hosting region, here’s what’s landed and what’s next.
Need to develop a major feature, experiment, or fix a bug, without interrupting your main deployment? Flexible Environments on Umbraco Cloud make it easy with the addition of vertical feature environments.
Work in full isolation alongside your Development environment. Ideal for:
Pull code and content from Development, work independently, and merge back when ready, all within your familiar Cloud workflow, now with more flexibility and control. Available on Standard and Professional plans
Learn more in the Flexible Environments documentation.
If you’re using CI/CD pipelines in Umbraco Cloud, version 2 of the Cloud API is ready to level up your workflow.
What you’ll get with CI/CD v2:
Note: API v1 remains available but won’t receive updates. Now’s the time to switch to v2 for the latest features.
Check out the CI/CD Documentation and Migration Guide for everything you need to get started.
Wondering if your domains are properly configured and live? With Hostname Monitoring on Umbraco Cloud, you can easily keep an eye on the status of all hostnames added to your environments, right from the Cloud Portal.
Catch issues early, or discover trends, before users notice.
Hostname monitoring enables instant health check and overview for your domains, directly in the Cloud portal. And best of all, it works out of the box. No extra setup required
See the Hostname Monitoring documentation for details and limitations.
Good news for teams and clients in North America: Umbraco Cloud now supports project hosting in Canada.
This new region adds even more flexibility when choosing where your projects live, whether for performance, compliance, or just being closer to your users and collaborators.
The new region enables you to:
When creating a new project, simply choose Canada (Central) as the hosting region.
Read the full announcement for more information.
We’re working on a much-requested feature that will make logging into the Umbraco Cloud Portal easier, safer, and more scalable. You’ll be able to use your own external identity provider, like Azure AD, Okta, Auth0, or any OpenID Connect-compatible service, to manage access to your Umbraco Cloud projects.
What’s in it for you?
Spend less time managing users and more time building, with secure, integrated access for your whole organization.
More details and rollout information later this year!
Want to know what’s happening on your site, as it happens?
The Umbraco Cloud Portal will include built-in Request Analytics, powered by Cloudflare Web Analytics. You’ll get a near-real-time, high-level view of your site’s traffic, right where you manage your environments. No setup, no tracking scripts, no extra tools.
We’re carefully considering the analytics to ensure both usability and performance, and are aiming to include:
For most use cases, like monitoring traffic patterns, debugging issues, or showing stakeholders what’s going on, sampled data is more than enough. And it will always be right at your fingertips in the Umbraco Cloud Portal.
We’re currently exploring ways to give you more control over how your Umbraco Cloud project is protected, right from the Portal.
A highly requested feature is enabling self-service configuration of the Web Application Firewall (WAF). The idea is to make it possible for you to fine-tune security settings based on the specific needs of your site, without needing to go through Support or external dashboards.
We’re exploring options for OWASP rule adjustments, targeted bot protection, and geographic restrictions, again, all managed directly in the Portal.
The Umbraco Add-ons continue to evolve with new features, performance improvements, and better support for the latest CMS versions. Release notes for all add-ons are available in the DXP documentation section.
From smarter segmentation in Engage and streamlined Commerce tools to powerful features and UI enhancements for Workflow, here’s what’s new:
Development on Umbraco Engage is moving at full speed. We are focusing on the release of version 16 with support for the new backoffice, while adding some exciting new features.
As mentioned above, we are working on the Deploy support for Engage. Besides that, the Umbraco 16 version is well underway with two milestone releases scheduled:
Umbraco Engage 16 - Analytics only is expected in July
Umbraco Engage 16 - Full version is expected in August
Umbraco Commerce continues to grow as a robust and flexible ecommerce solution that feels right at home in the Umbraco ecosystem. The latest releases focus on better customer handling, smarter discounting, and smoother order management. Umbraco Commerce 16 is now released and works seamlessly with the latest Umbraco version.
New capabilities include:
Whether you're starting your first store or scaling an existing one, these updates help you deliver better shopping experiences. Do you or your team want to get started with Umbraco Commerce? Then this is easier than ever with the new guide: Build a Store with Umbraco Commerce
Several new features are in development to expand Umbraco Commerce’s capabilities:
A major release has landed: Umbraco Workflow 16 introduces powerful new features to support advanced content publishing workflows.
Improved task summaries in notification emails.
Advanced Search now supports empty field queries, allowing more flexible filtering.
Alternate Versions and Release Sets are available behind feature flags and are designed to give teams greater control and collaboration. If you want to enable the new features, you can do so by editing your appsettings.json file (more info can be found in the release notes).
We will keep on polishing the new Release Sets and Alternate Versions, making Umbraco Workflow even more robust and stable.
These improvements make it easier to test forms before going live and offer more flexibility when setting up advanced validation logic.
A key focus in the coming months is ensuring that day-to-day operations continue to be a great experience and that we can plan for new features down the line. That’s why, for Umbraco Forms, we’re dedicated and focused on reviewing and addressing issues, bugs, and feedback raised on the issue tracker.
Recent work on Umbraco Deploy has been focused on ensuring full support for the latest version of Umbraco CMS. We are happy to say that Umbraco Deploy 16 was available day and date with the new major, and works seamlessly.
UI Builder 16:
Work is actively ongoing to support Deploy for Umbraco Engage, including content, configuration, and scoring data. This will make working across environments with Engage easier. We’ll share more as this development progresses.
For UI Builder, we’re continuing to review community feedback and issue tracker input to guide future updates.
The core CMS continues to evolve with a focus on stability, flexibility, and future-readiness. From the streamlined release of Umbraco 16 to upcoming improvements in search, and Docker support, here’s what’s new and what’s next.
Umbraco 16 was released just two weeks ago as a focused and lightweight update. This smaller release (major minor) brings you important enhancements, including the new default Rich Text Editor based on Tiptap. This replaces TinyMCE and introduces new extension points to handle customizations, toolbar functionality, and more.
Beyond these updates, Umbraco 16 is an intentionally light release. As we look ahead to Umbraco 17, our next Long-term Supported (LTS) version arriving in November 2025, we’re deliberately limiting the introduction of new and bigger features. This is to help ensure a manageable upgrade path for our partners and clients moving from one LTS to the next - reducing complexity and supporting long-term stability.
You can find all the details about Umbraco 16 here:
Umbraco 16 Release Candidate
One of the bigger features on the roadmap is a new search abstraction, with built-in support for filtering and faceted search, and enabling a more developer-friendly way to bring your own search engine to Umbraco.
We will continue to ship with Examine as the default search engine. But thanks to the abstraction, replacing Examine with your preferred search provider will no longer require deep customization or working around internal dependencies; it’ll be far simpler and cleaner.
We’ll ship the abstraction layer as a separate package in the coming months. This approach helps those upgrading to the next LTS version of Umbraco (17), one less thing to worry about if you are happy with your current search setup. It also means that we can release updates to the abstraction layer more frequently based on feedback from you.
We expect to include the abstraction into Umbraco at some point in the 18 to 21-cycle of releases. See the The Future of Search RFC for more information.
Running Umbraco in Docker containers has been possible for quite some time. However, until now, this has largely been driven by Umbraco Partners and implementers, without official support from the core CMS.
At the start of 2025, we set out to better understand your experiences with Docker, including challenges, workarounds, and insights you’ve encountered along the way. Many of you contributed valuable feedback in the GitHub discussion, and we truly appreciate your input.
Based on the feedback, we’ve created official documentation for running Umbraco in Docker. And moving forward, we’re committed to providing official support for running Umbraco in Docker, so if you encounter issues, you can now expect guidance and support directly from us.
It’s fantastic to see progress happening on all fronts. The momentum we saw at Codegarden is turning into real features, tools, and improvements for everyone building with Umbraco.
If you’re curious about where we’re headed next, keep an eye out for the newsletter dropping later this week. I’ll be sharing an update on our four product lighthouses and how they’re evolving and shaping the priorities for the rest of the year. If you're not subscribed to the newsletter yet, you can sign up for uNews here.
Remember that you can always keep yourself updated on what we’re working on “Now”, “Next”, and “Later” on the Umbraco Product Roadmap as well as check up on all released features in the Umbraco Roadmap History.
As you can see throughout the update, whether we’re talking Cloud or Commerce, the features and releases we do are inspired by the feedback we get from you. If you find issues or have specific feature requests, you can find the issue trackers for our products on the Umbraco GitHub account. If you have product feedback, you’re welcome to reach out to us at product@umbraco.com.
At the Codegarden 2025 keynote, we introduced a powerful new step in our AI journey: The Umbraco MCP Server (Model Context Protocol). Built on open standards and powered by Umbraco’s native flexibility, it turns AI clients like Claude, Cursor, VS Code, and GitHub Copilot into true CMS collaborators.