Drupal AI Hackathon: Play to impact 2026

Around 80 participants, nine teams and two days of collaboration.  

Following the success of the first edition of Drupal @ Europa Web Platform Hackathon, held in October 2024, DIGIT continued to build momentum around innovation and collaboration within the Drupal Community of Practice @EC and EUIBAs by organising the second edition of the “Play to Impact” Drupal AI Hackathon, held as part of the OpenSource week 2026.  

 On 27 and 28 January 2026, the hackathon took place at The One in Brussels, bringing together developers, designers, content specialists and digital experts from across Europe to explore how artificial intelligence can support the evolution of the Europa Web Platform and public digital services. 

Following an online kick-off earlier in January, around 80 participants, organised into nine multidisciplinary teams, spent two intensive days collaborating on concrete challenges linked to Drupal and AI. Supported by Mistral AI as event sponsor, teams moved beyond ideas to experiment with practical, human-centred solutions delivering real value for the European Commission’s web ecosystem. 

Over the two days, participants designed and developed prototypes and presented their solutions to a jury. The three top-ranked teams were recognised for their work and awarded Mistral AI credits, supporting continued experimentation and innovation beyond the hackathon. 

Two challenges, one shared ambition 

Participants worked on two strategic challenges closely aligned with DIGIT priorities. 

The first challenge, AI Agents for Content Editors, focused on how AI could be embedded into Drupal editorial workflows to reduce repetitive tasks, support content quality, and improve accessibility — while ensuring that editors remain in control at every step. 

The second challenge, AI-powered site building with Drupal Canvas, explored how AI-driven assistance could make website and page creation faster and more intuitive. Teams investigated natural-language interaction, accessibility-first validation and intelligent layout suggestions, all while respecting Europa Web Platform standards. 

From exploration to pre-prototypes 

Over the two days, teams followed a structured innovation journey, moving from challenge exploration and user needs analysis to co-creation, prototyping and final pitching. This approach allowed participants to translate abstract challenges into tangible solution concepts and pre-prototype demonstrations. 

Proposed solutions ranged from AI-powered editorial dashboards and content validation workflows to intelligent campaign page generation, document-to-page transformation and accessibility guidance embedded directly into Drupal Canvas. Across both challenges, teams consistently integrated governance, ethics and accessibility as core design principles rather than afterthoughts.  

At the end of the hackathon, all teams presented their work to a jury, and three teams were recognised for the quality, relevance and potential impact of their solutions and rewarded with credits Mistral. 

Building momentum for future innovation 

Beyond the concrete outputs produced over the two days, the hackathon also served as a valuable experimentation space for DIGIT. It highlighted the benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration, hands-on innovation and community-driven approaches to addressing real institutional needs. 

The “Play to Impact” Drupal AI Hackathon 2026 showed how structured innovation formats can help turn emerging technologies into practical tools for public administrations. It also laid solid foundations for future initiatives supporting the Europa Web Platform and fostering innovation across DIGIT. 

DIGIT would like to thank the technical support, as well as all jury members for their time, expertise and engagement throughout the event.