SoftForge will be at Joomla World Conference 2026, and if you build, run or rely on Joomla in any serious way, it is worth thinking about coming too. The conference runs from 16 to 18 October 2026 in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, and it is the first JWC since Rome in 2017. After a long gap, the global Joomla community is meeting in person again.

I will be there, and I would be glad to see as many people from the UK community as possible.

What Joomla World Conference actually is

Joomla World Conference, or JWC, is the global gathering of the Joomla community. It moves around the world; the last one was in Rome in 2017, and a planned 2019 edition did not go ahead. After several years without a global event, JWC 2026 is the project's return to a full international conference.

The 2026 edition is at Kongresshotel Potsdam, on the site of the former airship harbour beside Lake Templin. It is a short tram or train ride from central Potsdam and around half an hour from central Berlin, so it is easily reachable for anyone travelling from the UK via train or electric car.

The format is two and a half days, with four parallel tracks: two in English and two in German. That mix matters. The German tracks bring in agency owners and developers from the largest single Joomla-using market in Europe, and the English tracks pull in speakers from across Europe, North America, India and Australia. The official tagline this year is "Connecting people, code & communities", and that is a fair description of what actually happens. Half of the value is the talks. The other half is the conversations between the talks, over coffee, at dinner, and in the corridor after a session ends.

Why it is worth going

There are a few reasons it is worth making the trip, and they are the same reasons I would suggest anyone running a Joomla-based business should consider it.

Hearing what is coming, before it ships

JWC is where roadmap conversations happen out loud. Extension developers, template authors, agency owners and core contributors all sit in the same room and talk about what is working, what is not, and what people need next. Decisions about Joomla 6.x and beyond get shaped in those conversations, and being there changes how much of that you hear.

Security, in the open

The Joomla Security Strike Team coordinates security disclosures across the project, and JWC is one of the rare moments when the team and the wider security-focused community are in the same room. Talks on hardening Joomla, post-incident lessons, and tooling for safer deployments are usually some of the most useful sessions of the weekend, both for agencies and for in-house teams.

The people who keep your site working

If you run a Joomla site, the people who write the extensions you depend on, the people who maintain the templates you use, and the people who answer your support tickets are largely there. Putting a face to a Github handle is worth more than any number of forum posts.

Who should think about coming

JWC is not only for developers. It is genuinely useful for:

• Agency owners and freelancers who build Joomla sites for clients and want to talk pricing, process and tooling with peers.
• In-house developers who maintain a Joomla site as part of a wider role and want a focused weekend with the people who built the platform.
• Site owners and editors running their own Joomla sites who want a clearer view of the roadmap, the security picture, and what to budget for next.
• Extension developers who want to talk to other extension developers, and to the core team, about API direction.
• Public sector teams using Joomla under PSBAR or who are watching the European Accessibility Act, who want to see what other public bodies are doing.

If you have wondered whether your Joomla site is keeping up, this is a fairly cheap way to find out.

Practical details

The headline information on the conference is straightforward:

• Dates: Friday 16 October to Sunday 18 October 2026, with an optional informal get-together on the Thursday evening for those who arrive early.
• Venue: Kongresshotel Potsdam, Am Luftschiffhafen 1, D-14471 Potsdam, Germany.
• Getting there: Berlin Brandenburg airport (BER) is the obvious arrival point; the train from Berlin to Potsdam takes around 25 minutes, and Potsdam centre is a short ride from the venue.
• Format: Hybrid. In-person tickets get you the full experience including the corridor track; online tickets get you the talks but not the people. Supporter tickets are also available for anyone who wants to help fund the event.
• Tickets and full programme: conference.joomla.org.
• Call for speakers: open at the time of writing. If you have a talk in you on Joomla, hosting, security, accessibility or running a CMS-based business, this is the audience that wants to hear it.

Come and find us

If you are coming, drop me a line before the event so we can plan a coffee. Whether you are a long-standing SoftForge client, someone running a Joomla site we have never met, or you just want to talk about the Joomla 6 release cycle, or how UK agencies are responding to PSBAR and the EAA, I would be glad to hear from you.

You can email me at [email protected] or catch me on Mattermost and the Joomla community channels in the run-up to the event.

Joomla is one of the few open-source CMSs still being actively developed by a community rather than steered by a single vendor. JWC is the weekend where you see that community clearly. If you can make Potsdam in October, it is worth the trip.

Phil Walton is the founder of SoftForge. He was Release Manager for Joomla 6.0 and is a member of the Joomla community.