WordCamp Asia 2026

There are conferences you attend for the schedule — and then there are the ones you attend for the feeling. WordCamp Asia 2026 in Mumbai was the latter. Yes, the sessions were excellent. Yes, the speakers were some of the most knowledgeable people in the WordPress ecosystem. But what actually stayed with us was simpler than any of that: the feeling of being in a room full of people who genuinely love what they build.

For the team at XylusThemes, WCAsia 2026 was three days of learning that we could not have gotten from any blog post, course, or livestream. It was conversations over tea that shifted how we think. Sessions that answered questions we did not even know we had. And connections with people from across the world who are navigating the same challenges we are — with curiosity, generosity, and a shared love of the open web.

This is our personal account of those three days. Not a business report — a reflection. What we heard, what we felt, who we met, and what we are carrying home with us.

About WordCamp Asia 2026

WordCamps are community-organised WordPress conferences that bring together everyone from first-time contributors to longtime core team members — bloggers, developers, designers, educators, and entrepreneurs — all under one roof. WordCamp Asia is the region’s flagship gathering, and this year it came to Mumbai.

WordCamp Asia 2026 ran from April 9 to 11 at the Jio World Convention Centre. 2,281 attendees joined from across Asia and beyond — making it one of the largest WordPress gatherings the region has ever seen. The three-day program spanned Contributor Day, two full conference days, YouthCamp, an Open-Source Library, and an after party in Jasmine Hall.

“WordPress is not a company. It is a shared commitment to keeping the web open.”

— Mary Hubbard, Executive Director, WordPress

That line from Mary Hubbard’s remarks captures the spirit of what WCAsia is really about. Beyond the schedule — beyond the sessions and the sponsor booths and the family photo — it is a reminder that every person in that room is part of something larger than any one product or company.

Day 1 — Contributor Day (April 9)

Contributor Day is where WCAsia starts to feel real. Before the keynotes, before the sessions, before the networking — there is a day dedicated entirely to giving back to the project. Not talking about WordPress. Actually working on it.

This year, more than 1,500 contributors gathered around 38 table leads across more than 20 contribution teams. The energy in the room was unlike anything you find at a typical conference. These were people who showed up — with their laptops open and their sleeves rolled up — to move WordPress forward.

Contribution Day WordCamp Asia

What Got Built on Day 1

The numbers at the end of the day told part of the story. Polyglots contributors suggested more than 7,000 strings and reviewed 3,200 of them — a remarkable volume of translation work in a single day. Photo contributors uploaded 76 images to the WordPress photo library. The Test team worked through more than 20 tickets, and 55 new contributors joined the Training team.

But numbers only capture so much. What Contributor Day really produced was something less measurable: dozens of first contributions, new collaborations between people who had only known each other online, and a collective sense of ownership over a project that belongs to everyone who shows up for it.

The Making of a WordPress Release — Featured Panel

One of Contributor Day’s highlights was a featured panel: The Making of a WordPress Release: Conversations with Past Release Squad Members. Hearing from the people who have actually shepherded WordPress releases — the coordination, the decisions, the close calls — gave a sense of how much care goes into every version that ships to millions of sites. It also made WordPress 7.0’s upcoming features feel exciting and human: new Synced Pattern overrides, Font Library enhancements, full-page zoom in the Site Editor, and deeper REST API capabilities are being shaped by a community of real people who care deeply about getting it right.

Workshops, YouthCamp & the Open-Source Library

Contributor Day was not just for seasoned contributors. Workshops created structured space for skill-building at every level. YouthCamp brought younger attendees into the experience — building simple WordPress pages, presenting what they made, and discovering that open source is something they can be part of too.

The Open-Source Library was one of the most quietly special features of the event. Less a formal session and more a living conversation — a space where people shared the stories behind their contributions, explored the philosophy of open source, and connected with the humans behind the projects they use every day.

A Conversation with Lawrence Ladomery, WPBakery

WPbakery team with xylustheme

One of the most memorable exchanges of Contributor Day happened for us at the Open-Source Library forum — a long, candid conversation with Lawrence Ladomery from WPBakery. Lawrence shared his perspective on open-source marketing: how to tell stories that are honest rather than promotional, how to earn trust in a community that is quick to sense inauthenticity, and how to think about the long game when your audience is a community of builders rather than a market segment. It was the kind of conversation that reframes how you think about your work — and we are still thinking about it.

Day 2 — Conference Day 1 (April 10)

Day 2 opened with morning networking over tea — a gentle, unhurried start that immediately gave way to a full day of ideas. Three parallel tracks (Foundation, Growth, Enterprise) meant that no matter what your background or focus, there was always something calling you somewhere. The hardest part was choosing.

Opening Session: WordPress and AI — James LePage, Automattic

James LePage’s opening session set the tone for the entire conference. The session was not a hype piece — it was an honest, grounded look at how AI is already changing the way WordPress sites are built, maintained, and experienced. From AI-assisted block editors to intelligent content workflows, the conversation was practical: here is what is already happening, here is what is coming, here is what it means for you.

What struck us most was not any single tool or feature — it was the framing. AI is not replacing WordPress builders. It is changing what they spend their energy on. The builders who are thriving are the ones who are curious, experimental, and willing to keep learning.

Fireside Chat: Mary Hubbard & Shilpa Shah

This conversation was the emotional centre of Day 2. Mary Hubbard, Executive Director of WordPress, joined Shilpa Shah for a wide-ranging discussion on trust, security, education initiatives, and the long-term questions shaping open-source publishing. More than a leadership update, it felt like a genuine reflection on what it means to steward a project that belongs to the world — and the responsibility that comes with that.

How to Start an Enterprise WordPress Agency in 2026 — Rahul Bansal, rtCamp

Rtcamp @ WordCamp Asia

Rahul Bansal, founder of rtCamp and one of the most respected names in enterprise WordPress, gave a session that felt less like a conference talk and more like an honest conversation with someone who has been in the trenches for years and is willing to tell you what it actually looks like from the inside.

Rahul walked through what it truly takes to build and run an enterprise WordPress agency in 2026 — and he did not soften the difficult parts. He talked about the importance of hiring for culture and curiosity before skills, about why the first enterprise client is both the hardest and the most important, about the kind of systems and documentation discipline that separates agencies that scale from those that collapse under their own complexity. He was frank about mistakes rtCamp had made and what they learned from them.

What made the session particularly memorable was his perspective on client relationships at enterprise level: the best ones are not transactional — they are built on genuine technical trust, and that trust takes time and consistency to earn. There is no shortcut.

From Static to Dynamic: The Interactivity API — Ryan Welcher, Automattic

Ryan Welcher’s session opened up a corner of WordPress development that a lot of people are not yet exploring. The Interactivity API makes it possible to build rich, reactive block experiences without reaching for a separate JavaScript framework. Watching the live demos made something click that reading the documentation alone had not.

Parsing HTML Without Pain: The WordPress HTML API — Hardik Thakkar

A technically deep session that earned its depth. Hardik’s examples were drawn from real plugin development scenarios — the kind of messy, practical problems that most developers recognise immediately. The HTML API turned out to be more powerful, and more approachable, than we had expected.

Lost & Found in AI Wonderland: An Honest Journey — Nirav Mehta

Nirav Mehta Session

This was one of those rare sessions where the room visibly relaxed. Nirav Mehta — one of the most experienced WordPress product builders in Asia — did something that most conference speakers do not dare to do: he showed us his failures alongside his wins.

Rather than presenting AI as a solved problem, Nirav walked through his actual experience over the past year — the tools that overpromised and underdelivered, the workflows that seemed magical at first and then quietly broke, the moments where he nearly gave up on a particular approach entirely. And then, alongside those, the genuine breakthroughs: the use cases where AI actually saved hours, the experiments that surprised him, the patterns he has learned to look for when evaluating whether an AI tool is worth adopting.

The takeaway was not a list of recommended tools. It was a mindset: stay curious, stay sceptical, stay willing to experiment — and do not be embarrassed when something does not work. That honesty was more useful than any polished case study. After the session, there was a crowd around Nirav for a long time. That tells you something.

Making WordPress Content Machine-Readable — Adeline Dahal

As AI-powered search and content discovery become more prominent, how you structure your WordPress content matters more than ever. Adeline’s session explored practical approaches to making content more readable — not just for humans, but for the AI systems that are increasingly shaping how people find and consume information.

Evolving Plugin Standards — Luke Carbis

Luke Carbis made a case that felt important and a little overdue: the WordPress plugin ecosystem’s trustworthiness depends on the standards we hold each other to. This was not a finger-pointing session — it was a thoughtful call for the community to care collectively about the quality and safety of the tools we share.

The People We Met on Days 2-3

Between sessions, at the sponsor hall, over lunch, during the tea breaks — Day 2 was full of the kind of conversations that do not fit on a schedule but matter just as much as anything in the programme.

• Bhavesh R & Sonal Sinha, BKT Themes: People we have admired from afar for years. Meeting them in person was a genuinely warm moment — two people who have shaped the WordPress theme ecosystem and carry that legacy with real humility.
• Chetan Prajapati: Seeing him at WCAsia — representing the Ahmedabad WordPress community on the Asia stage — was a proud moment. His energy and commitment to the local ecosystem is something the whole community benefits from.
• Head of Google Search: A spontaneous conversation that reflected how deeply WordPress and web discovery are intertwined.
• Horea Radu, Espresso AI: CEO and Co-Founder of Espresso AI. His perspective on building AI-native tools for WordPress was thoughtful and forward-looking — less about trends, more about genuine problems worth solving.
• Team Astra Theme: They walked us through their latest product launches and where the theme is heading. Wonderful to hear the thinking behind a product that powers over 12 million websites — and to see how much care still goes into it.
• miniOrange Team: A great conversation about where WordPress security and identity management is heading. Their perspective on how sites handle authentication and access at scale was genuinely illuminating.
• Mary Voelker, Automattic: Connected at the Automattic booth. There is always something grounding about spending time with the Automattic team — a reminder of the scale and the care behind the company that does so much to sustain WordPress.

Day 3 — Conference Day 2 (April 11)

The final day of WCAsia 2026 had a different energy — a mix of depth and warmth, like the last chapter of a book you do not want to end. Sessions went deeper. Conversations went longer. And there was a growing feeling, by afternoon, that something real had happened here over three days.

Schema Sharing and Sustainable Forms — Takayuki Miyoshi, Creator of Contact Form 7

If you have ever installed Contact Form 7 — and there are over five million active sites that have — you have used Takayuki Miyoshi’s work. Hearing him speak was a quietly moving experience. His session on schema sharing and sustainable plugin management was technical and philosophical in equal measure: what does it actually mean to maintain something that millions of people depend on? How do you keep something reliable without losing yourself in the process?

We had the chance to speak with Takayuki briefly, and his warmth and care came through immediately. There is something deeply reassuring about meeting the people behind the tools you trust — and finding that they are exactly who you hoped they would be.

One Developer, 30+ Plugins, with AI — Fumiki Takahashi

Fumiki’s session was one of the most practically fascinating of the entire conference. He walked through how he uses AI tools to maintain, update, and improve a large portfolio of WordPress plugins — not as a shortcut, but as a genuine shift in how he works. The economics of plugin development are changing, and Fumiki is one of the clearest examples of what is possible when you embrace that change thoughtfully.

WordPress Playground + AI: Autonomous Testing — Fellyph Cintra

Fellyph’s session showed what is possible when two powerful tools meet. WordPress Playground combined with AI creates testing pipelines that run autonomously — checking plugin behaviour across WordPress versions without any manual effort. For anyone who has ever broken something in a plugin update and not caught it until a user reported it, this session was both validating and motivating.

WordPress and Community in Japan — Kotaro Kitamura & Chiharu Nagatomi

One of our favourite sessions of Day 3. Kotaro Kitamura and Chiharu Nagatomi shared how WordPress — and its community — shaped their professional journeys. This was not a technical talk. It was a deeply human one: about discovering a community, growing through it, and finding that the connections you make through open source become some of the most meaningful of your career.

Our conversation with Kotaro after the session went long. He talked about the particular culture of the Japanese WordPress community — the emphasis on craft, on collaboration, on showing up consistently. It resonated strongly with how we think about our own work.

“The Japanese WordPress community is built on trust and quiet consistency — people who come back year after year, not because it is useful, but because it means something.”

— From our conversation with Kotaro Kitamura

The Story of Wapuu — Kazuko Kaneuchi

Wapuu — the beloved WordPress mascot — has a story, and Kazuko Kaneuchi told it beautifully. This session was a reminder that the culture of contribution is made up of many layers, including the playful, creative, human ones. The way Wapuu spread through the global WordPress community as a symbol of belonging and joy is, in its own way, a story about what open source can be at its best.

Enterprise WordPress and the Agentic Future — James Giroux

James Giroux’s session explored how enterprise WordPress is being positioned for the era of agentic AI — where AI systems execute complex, multi-step tasks on behalf of users. WordPress’s REST API and plugin architecture make it uniquely suited for this. Hearing James lay out the logic clearly made the future feel closer and more tangible than abstract discussions about AI usually do.

Cross-Border Commerce from India — Abid Murshed, PayPal India

Abid Murshed’s session on cross-border commerce was one of the most practically grounded talks of the event. He unpacked the realities of selling across borders from India, what has changed in the payments landscape, and where the friction points remain. The session was filled with real data and honest perspective — not a product pitch, but a genuine attempt to help the room understand what their international customers experience.

Closing Session: A Community Looks Forward

WordCamp Asia 2026 closed with a session that reflected everything the event had been. Chenda Ngak opened with a remarkable announcement: WordCamp India will join the flagship WordCamp calendar in 2027 as the fourth global flagship event — a milestone that felt especially meaningful given where the event was being held.

Mary Hubbard’s closing remarks brought together threads that had surfaced across all three days: India’s long and deep role in the WordPress project, the growing impact of programmes like Campus Connect and WordPress Credits, the energy of YouthCamp, and the significance of what WordPress 7.0 is building toward. Peter Wilson and Sergey Biryukov joined her on stage for a panel discussion that opened up to the audience — questions about contributor growth, AI, local communities, and the long-term health of the open web.

Even though he could not be there in person, Ma.tt Mullenweg followed along remotely and sent written responses to questions during the live Q&A — a small but meaningful gesture of presence and care for the community gathered in Mumbai.

What We Are Taking Home

1. AI is a new kind of collaborator — not a replacement

Across sessions from James LePage, Nirav Mehta, Fumiki Takahashi, and Fellyph Cintra, a consistent picture emerged: the developers and builders who are thriving with AI are the ones who treat it as a collaborator with a different skill set — useful for some things, limited in others, and always requiring human judgement.

2. Sustainability matters as much as innovation

Takayuki Miyoshi’s session lingered with us. Building something that millions of people trust is not primarily about shipping features — it is about maintaining something reliably, transparently, and with care. That applies to plugins, to communities, and to how we show up for the people who use what we make.

3. Community is a practice, not a feature

WordCamp Asia made it clear that the WordPress community is not something that just happens around the software. It is something people actively build — through contribution, through showing up, through the tea break conversation and the Contributor Day table and the family photo.

4. The open web is worth protecting

Mary Hubbard’s remark — that WordPress is a shared commitment, not a company — echoed across the entire event. In a world where closed platforms are consolidating power, the open web does not sustain itself automatically. It is sustained by the people who keep choosing it.

5. The people behind the tools are people

Meeting Takayuki Miyoshi, spending time with Kotaro Kitamura, talking with Lawrence Ladomery and Horea Radu and the teams behind Astra and miniOrange — in every case, the human behind the product was more thoughtful, more curious, and more generous than any About page could convey. That is the part that only WCAsia can give you.

Thank You, WordCamp Asia 2026

Running an event for 2,281 people across three days is an act of love. To the organising team, the 38 table leads, the volunteers who kept everything moving, and the speakers who gave their time and ideas — thank you. This was a remarkable event.

Particular gratitude to the people and conversations that made our WCAsia 2026 unforgettable:

• James LePage — for an opening session that set the tone for three days of honest AI conversations
• Mary Hubbard — for the fireside chat, for the closing remarks, and for the clarity of vision
• Takayuki Miyoshi — for Contact Form 7, and for the session on what it means to build something worth sustaining
• Rahul Bansal, rtCamp — for the candid and practical talk on building with WordPress at scale
• Nirav Mehta — for being honest about AI in a room full of people pretending to have figured it out
• Abid Murshed, PayPal India — for the grounded, data-rich session on cross-border commerce
• Kotaro Kitamura & Chiharu Nagatomi — for sharing how community shaped their journeys, and for the conversation that followed
• Kazuko Kaneuchi — for the story of Wapuu and what it says about culture and contribution
• Lawrence Ladomery, WPBakery — for the open, generous conversation on open-source storytelling
• Horea Radu, Espresso AI — for the forward-looking perspective on AI and WordPress
• Bhavesh R & Sonal S Sinha, BKT Themes — for being exactly the generous, warm people the community says they are
• Team Astra Theme — for the warm welcome, the product insights, and the excitement about what is coming next
• The miniOrange Team — for the conversation on security and identity in WordPress
• Chetan Prajapati — for representing Ahmedabad with so much pride and energy
• Chenda Ngak — for the WordCamp India 2027 announcement that sent a ripple of excitement through the room
• Peter Wilson and Sergey Biryukov — for joining the closing panel and the thoughtful discussion on the future of WordPress
• Every attendee, volunteer, and contributor who made WCAsia 2026 what it was

See You at the Next One

If you have never been to a WordCamp, we would gently encourage you to consider it. Not primarily for the sessions — though those are genuinely valuable — but for the experience of being in a room full of people who share a commitment to building the web openly, collaboratively, and with care.

The next flagship gatherings are WordCamp India 2027  — something we are already looking forward to.

If you want to follow what we are building at XylusThemes, or just talk WordPress, we would love to hear from you at xylusthemes.com.

Written by Karan Gadhavi, Founder — XylusThemes & Xylus Info | April 2026