Codegarden 2026: A Week in Copenhagen I Won't Forget

I've just got back from an incredible week in Copenhagen for Codegarden, and I'm still trying to process all of it. It was full of great talks, social events, and the chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I've been lucky enough to attend the three previous Codegardens in Odense, but this was my first time experiencing it properly in Copenhagen, the city where the very first Codegarden took place back in 2005 with just 23 attendees. The conference has grown a lot since then, and being back where it all began felt fitting.

If you've never been, it's hard to explain what makes Codegarden so special. There's a warmth and an openness to it that's rare in tech these days. People genuinely want to share what they know, help you with the problem you've been stuck on, and celebrate your wins as if they were their own. It really does feel less like a conference and more like a community that happens to gather in one place once a year, and that spirit is the thing I look forward to most.

It's a community I've grown into gradually rather than all at once. I attended my first Umbraco event back in 2019 and barely knew a soul, standing on the edge of things wondering whether I really belonged. Things started to change when I got involved in the Umbraco Kent meetups in 2021, and then attending CODECABIN in 2022 was the real turning point. That weekend, more than anything, gave me the opportunity to properly start my journey in the Umbraco community. Looking back now, it's quite something to think how far that journey has come.

This year was special for me on two fronts. Not only had I been awarded Umbraco MVP for 2026 (something I knew about in advance but was sworn to secrecy on), but I had also been invited on stage by Filip during his keynote to give a short demo of the AI Log Analyser package I built for the Spark AI Hackathon back in March.

I'll be honest, I was nervous about the demo. I've never spoken in front of that many people, and the thought of it was daunting. But I knew I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone, so I said yes. As far as I'm aware, it's the first time someone from the community has been invited up on stage during the keynote itself, which made it an even bigger honour. More on how that went shortly.

I flew out on the Sunday, travelling with Aaron Sadler and Mike Masey, and arrived in the early afternoon. After checking into the hotel we headed straight down to Nyhavn for lunch, which is about the best possible introduction to Copenhagen you could ask for.

Monday and Tuesday were taken up by the MVP Summit. We spent both days in sessions discussing various issues and feeding back directly to Umbraco HQ. The conversations were genuinely interesting, hearing how other people approach things and the ideas they had for improving Umbraco. Just as valuable was the chance to meet MVPs I'd never met before and catch up with those I already knew.

On the Monday evening we ate at Broens Street Food market, just over the bridge from Nyhavn, for food and drinks. Tuesday afternoon was left free, so I took the opportunity to catch up on some work and clear my inbox before the evening. Later we headed to Green Island, a pizza restaurant and bar built on pontoons out on the water, which was honestly stunning.

From there we went on to the Codegarden pre-party at the Knowit offices, conveniently just around the corner from my hotel. The pre-party is a great way to reconnect with attendees and people from HQ I hadn't seen in a while, all over a few drinks. I'm not the most sociable person by nature, but I really enjoyed the evening and it flew by. With the demo looming the next morning, I was conscious not to overdo it and left at a sensible hour.

Wednesday was the start of the conference proper. Aaron and I headed to the venue sharpish and were among the first there. I wanted to get my bearings, find my feet, and run through the demo with Filip so I knew exactly when I'd be on stage and what my cue would be.

I had a front-row seat alongside the other newly awarded MVPs. The first part of the keynote was presented by Matts and Emma, during which all the new MVPs were introduced and invited up on stage to receive their awards. That was a genuinely proud moment. It acknowledged the time and effort I've put into supporting and helping the Umbraco community over the last few years, especially organising the Kent meetup, but also more recently through writing packages, blog posts, and helping out on the forums.

During the break before the product keynote, I got mic'd up and ready. Just before I went up, Matt Bliss said something to me that I'll carry for a long time. He told me that everyone out there is a friend, and they all want you to do well. It was a simple thing to say, but it meant the world in that moment. It instantly took the edge off, and it summed up everything I love about this community in a single sentence. I wasn't standing in front of a crowd of strangers waiting for me to slip up. I was standing in front of friends who were quietly rooting for me.

I was due on stage around 25 minutes into Filip's keynote, once he reached the section on the community AI hackathons. That was my cue. I'd expected to be a bundle of nerves, but when the moment came I wasn't, and I think Matt's words had a lot to do with that. I'd rehearsed my lines, and I was speaking over a pre-recorded demo to keep the demo gods happy. It all went smoothly and was well received. I was glad when it was over, mostly because I could finally relax and enjoy the rest of the day. There were over 700 people in the room and another 700 or so watching online. The kind words and encouragement people offered afterwards stayed with me for the rest of the week.

The rest of the day was spent attending sessions and catching up with people as I wandered around the venue.

Here are the Wednesday sessions I attended:

• Matthew Wise, Vibe Coder to AI Engineer. An insightful talk on using AI to assist your development, where Matt walked through his own journey from simple prompting to a proper AI development workflow covering planning, memories and skills.

• Bolette Kern, Umbraco CMS in the Age of AI: One strategy, two tracks, and the CMS foundation. Bolette talked about the future of AI development and how Umbraco is embracing AI on two fronts: from within the backoffice for content editors, and externally through the MCP server and backoffice skills to aid development.

• Kenn Jacobsen, It's Elemental: reuse your content! Kenn covered the new Elements library and how you can use it instead of creating non-routable content in the content tree. He demoed what's available in Umbraco 18 along with the reusable blocks coming via Elements in Umbraco 19.

• Grey Muir, From Stakeholders to Beholders: How Running a DnD Campaign Can Make You a Better Developer. An interactive session where three members of the audience were called up to play characters in a D&D story to defeat the Demon King. It drew parallels between running a campaign and being a better developer, covering storytelling, worldbuilding, sessions, detail, dealing with the unexpected, and bringing it all together for a final challenge. A genuinely warm and joyful session that took me right back to playing D&D in my youth.

• Jamie Taylor, Carole Rennie Logan, Lotte Pitcher and Emma Burstow, Live from Codegarden: A Modern .NET Show × Candid Contributions Special! As a long-time listener to the Modern .NET Show, it was great to hear their views on .NET and the modern open source world. They talked about Umbraco, Codegarden, contributing to open source, how we use AI, and the impact that has on people just starting out in development.

Wednesday evening brought the dinner and the Umbraco Awards. I'd submitted my AI Log Analyser for the AI Package Award back in April. I knew I'd been shortlisted, but I had no idea who or how many other packages I was up against.

The awards evening was hugely entertaining, with HQ putting on a proper show, complete with people dressed up as famous faces handing out the awards. The first part of the evening was the Umbraco Awards, showcasing some beautiful sites with genuinely impressive features and integrations. Well done to all the nominees and winners there.

The second part was the Package Awards: the standard Package Award first, followed by the AI Package Award. They ran a short explainer video for each nominee along with the jury's comments. I don't remember much of what was said about mine, it all became a bit of a blur. The nominees were called up on stage together, and when my name was read out as the winner I was truly astonished. I'd only built the package to learn how to work with AI in Umbraco, and it happened to be my first ever package. Winning was the last thing I expected. It was a brilliant end to an amazing, if slightly surreal, day.

Thursday felt far more relaxed now that both the demo and the awards were behind me. I spent the day taking in more great sessions and chatting with attendees, including a few people I'd only ever known online finally meeting them in person.

Here are the Thursday sessions I attended:

• Richard Campbell, After the AI Hype: What's Real, What's Next. Richard is one of the hosts of .NET Rocks and an excellent speaker. I was lucky enough to catch his other talk, "Building Data Centres in Space," during the MVP Summit, and this one was just as interesting and detailed. He walked through the history of AI and how the term itself has been used as a catch-all for other technologies over the years, then looked at the real success stories alongside the opportunities, challenges and hype.

• Owain Williams, Unlocking the Umbraco Management API: Beyond the Backoffice. This looked at using the Umbraco Management API outside of the backoffice. Owain shared the gotchas he ran into when first starting out with it and how to use it in practical, real-world scenarios.

• Callum Whyte, Building Resilient Umbraco Integrations. Callum is both a Microsoft and Umbraco MVP, and he shared how to make Umbraco more resilient when integrating with unreliable third-party systems, including caching, retries and circuit breakers. Full of practical tips for building reliable systems.

• Andy Butland, Our Roadmap, Your CMS: Umbraco 17 Released and What We're Building Next. Andy ran through everything arriving in Umbraco 17 and what's planned for 18, including global elements, the move to EF Core, UI and performance improvements, and other new features.

• Jenny Kitchen, Leading a B Corp agency: the good, the bad & the ugly. An insightful talk on how Yoyo became one of the first digital agencies to achieve B Corp certification. Jenny covered what certification actually means and her journey getting there, making sure her team were part of the discussions along the way. It had some great audience participation, with two sides of the room "protesting" at each other: the traditional view that a business exists to make profit for shareholders, and what a B Corp certified company would do instead.

The day ended with the famous Thursday dinner and "entertainment," which of course involved musical chairs, Umbraco bingo, an orchestra, and absolutely no cults. I won't even attempt to explain what happens on the Thursday evening. It's one of those things you really do have to experience for yourself.

Friday was the hackathon, attended by around 30 people. My goal was to update my package to work with Umbraco 18, but I could only get so far since there's no RC for the Umbraco.AI packages on v18 yet. So I laid the groundwork to prepare it for multi-targeting and will finish the job once the final version is released in a few weeks.

I also added an easter egg: a snarky mode, where the AI responds in a cheeky, sarcastic tone modelled on Marvin the Paranoid Android. It's purely for fun and came out of a conversation with another MVP, Jonny Muir, about adding a bit of humour to the responses.

I left the hackathon a little early to meet my wife Julie at the airport. She'd flown out so we could spend the weekend together, which was the perfect way to relax and unwind after a hectic but wonderful week. We got to see plenty of Copenhagen and do all the touristy things before flying home on the Sunday.

I always come away from Codegarden full of new ideas, inspiration and things to think about, but this year was something else entirely. Being recognised as an MVP, getting up on stage in front of that many people, and then unexpectedly walking away with an award is more than I could ever have hoped for when I first started getting involved in the community.

When I sit and think about it though, the awards and the stage time aren't really what I'll remember most. What stays with me is the people. It's the quiet word of encouragement before a daunting moment, the friends who came to find me afterwards just to say well done, the strangers who became friends over a coffee or a beer, and the genuine sense that everyone in that room wants the people around them to succeed. Matt's words before I went on stage summed it up perfectly: out there, everyone is a friend, and they want you to do well. That's a rare thing to find anywhere, let alone in tech, and I don't take it for granted.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of a community that lifts people up rather than holds them back, one that celebrates your wins and helps you grow without ever expecting anything in return. None of this past week would have happened without the people who make Umbraco what it is, from HQ to the wider community, so thank you to every single one of you who made it so memorable. I came home tired, a little overwhelmed, and full of gratitude. Roll on next year.