Umbraco India Festival 2026: Inside India’s First Umbraco Festival

India’s first Umbraco Festival brought over 100 people to Kochi on 28 and 29 August 2026. The two-day programme included a hackathon aboard the Kochi Water Metro, eight sessions at Lulu IT Twin Towers and visitors from India, Nepal and Denmark.

The Umbraco India User Group organised the festival with support from Umbraco HQ, sponsors, speakers and volunteers. Phases joined as a sponsor and Umbraco Contributing Gold Partner, with six colleagues serving among the ten organisers.

Behind those numbers was a community meeting in person after years of forum conversations, local meetups and shared contribution. Kochi gave that community a place to learn together and enjoy the company behind the usernames.

Before the first boat left

Before the first boat left, Umbraco HQ, UIUG organisers, sponsors and members of the Phases team met at our Kochi office.

Mathilde Høst, Tony Meyn and Emmanuel Tissera joined the gathering on 28 August. Some people were meeting for the first time, while others knew each other through Codegarden, community calls, forums and Umbraco projects.

Our office served as the meeting point before the group travelled to the High Court Water Metro Terminal. Final checks happened there, but the value of the gathering came from having community members from several countries in one room before the public programme began.

Hack on the Waves: an Umbraco hackathon on the Water Metro

Hack on the Waves gave the opening day an unmistakably Kochi setting. Around 50 participants boarded the Water Metro for a three-hour Umbraco hackathon through the city’s backwaters.

People could work alone or in teams of three. The brief allowed room for AI ideas, backoffice improvements, packages, open issues and proposals brought by participants. Starter kits and help gave newcomers a way into the work without lowering the technical ambition.

Coding shared the boat with discussion. Developers exchanged approaches, joined other groups and met people they had known through online channels. The format made contribution feel open, without turning the afternoon into a contest for the fastest finished package.

At the end of the cruise, teams presented prototypes, packages and early ideas. Some were ready for further testing; others opened a useful technical conversation. Both belonged in a community hackathon.

The Water Metro added something few conference venues could offer. Kochi passed outside the windows while laptops, pizza and Umbraco discussions filled the boat. The setting was memorable because it belonged naturally to the city hosting the festival.

More than 100 people arrived in Kochi

The main Umbraco India Festival opened on 29 August 2026 at Lulu IT Twin Towers in SmartCity, Kochi. Over 100 attendees came from several parts of India, with visitors also travelling from Nepal and Denmark.

A Kathakali performance welcomed the audience and placed Kerala at the heart of the day. Jeena Vaheed, Managing Director at Phases, hosted the programme. Jeena and Jerin led short activities between sessions, giving the audience a change of pace during a full schedule.

The venue offered space for conversations outside the session hall. Mini golf, console games, a 3D-printing booth, food counters and chai kept people together between talks.

Codegarden has long given the global Umbraco community a place to meet. Kochi brought that same openness into an Indian setting, shaped by the city, the local group and the people who travelled to take part.

One long table after the hackathon

Speakers, sponsors, organisers and members of Umbraco HQ met for dinner after returning to shore. A shared table gave people enough time to talk about Umbraco, careers, local opportunities and plans for future community events.

That evening also revealed how much work goes into a festival. Venue checks, seating, AV, presentation updates and last-minute choices continued long after dinner.

Afreed CP, a Phases software engineer, two-time Umbraco MVP and member of the organising group, has written about those hours in his account of how India’s first Umbraco Festival came to life. His account includes the 5 a.m. chai, the missed sleep and the effort that attendees never had to see.

Eight sessions and plenty to take home

The Umbraco India Festival 2026 programme covered AI, MCP, load balancing, search, enterprise replatforming, mindfulness and community contribution.

Tony Meyn traced 21 years of load balancing in Umbraco, from early methods to Umbraco Cloud. Emmanuel Tissera examined AI and Umbraco from a developer’s view. Nikhil Prajapati brought Umbraco Automate and MCP into one discussion, while Stephen Simon spoke about using MCP with AI agents.

Mateen Shaikh covered SEO, AEO and GEO in Umbraco. His session gave the programme a timely commercial angle as search expands beyond standard results pages.

Seema Sunil led a session on mindfulness. Bishal Tim spoke about attending a Kathmandu meetup in 2024 and later becoming Nepal’s first Umbraco MVP. Together, the sessions reflected both the technology and the people who keep an open-source community active.

The programme gave developers tested ideas they could take back to their projects. It also gave content and technology teams a view of where Umbraco is heading, especially around AI, cloud delivery and search visibility.

Phases on stage: three CMS platforms brought into one

Ansar M, Co-founder and CTO at Phases, and Farshadudheen K, Technical Lead at Phases, presented “Enterprise Replatforming: Consolidating Three CMSs into a Unified Umbraco Cloud Platform.”

The session came from a completed Phases migration involving three established websites, each built on a different CMS. Our team brought them into one Umbraco Cloud platform while preserving the needs of separate websites, editorial groups and existing integrations.

Ansar and Farshad covered platform governance, shared development, content migration and the work required after launch. Their account came from choices made during delivery rather than an ideal version of a migration.

Large enterprises often fund several CMS platforms because each website has grown separately. Over time, upgrades, security reviews, hosting and editorial governance become harder to coordinate. Consolidation can reduce that burden, provided the new platform respects the needs of every website and team involved.

Bringing this case to the Umbraco India Festival gave the audience a chance to examine those choices with the people who made them.

A hot seat, students and access to the community

An open hot-seat session followed the scheduled talks. Members of the Umbraco team answered questions from the audience, allowing the discussion to follow the interests in the room.

Students also attended the festival. Many colleges in India give students limited exposure to Umbraco, even when they already work with current programming languages and AI tools. Meeting developers, MVPs and Umbraco HQ offered a useful introduction to the platform and its community.

The closing recognised several contributions. Bishal Tim received his MVP award in person after missing Codegarden, and the MVPs gathered for an H5YR. Sponsors received mementos, while event helpers received gifts brought from Denmark by Umbraco.

Dhanesh Kumar, a three-time Umbraco MVP at Phases, delivered the vote of thanks. The memento given to Phases now has a place in our office, representing our role among the many people who supported the festival.

The people from Phases behind the festival

The Umbraco India User Group organised and ran the festival. Umbraco HQ, speakers, volunteers and sponsors supported the group throughout the two days.

Phases participated as a sponsor and Umbraco Contributing Gold Partner. Six members of the ten-person organising group were Phases colleagues:

• Vishnu V S

• Girish S

• Anjumol Babu

• Dhanesh Kumar

• Arunkumar VR

• Afreed CP

Ansar M and Jeena Vaheed were listed among the wider contributors. Colleagues also helped with transport, hospitality, design and communication.

Phases has worked with Umbraco since 2011. Community contribution has grown alongside that delivery history through meetups, packages, forum participation, speaking sessions and MVP recognition.

The festival belonged to UIUG and the wider Umbraco community. Our part was to support their work with people, time and sponsorship.

Kochi closed the first chapter. Goa comes next.

Dinner and a DJ closed the evening. By then, the room felt less like the end of a technology conference and more like a group of people who were not ready to leave one another yet. Even beside the music, conversations about Umbraco, AI, packages and the next meetup carried on.

Then came the final announcement: the next Umbraco India Festival is heading to Goa.

Kochi showed that India’s Umbraco community can host an international festival that is technically useful, welcoming and entirely its own. UIUG gave the country its first dedicated Umbraco festival. Umbraco HQ, the sponsors, speakers, helpers and more than 100 attendees gave it the scale and spirit it deserved.

We were glad to support the first one. We will be equally glad to play our part when the community meets again in Goa.

H5YR. 🖐️