CMS Kickoff 2026: Perspectives on AI, Open Source, and Digital Sovereignty
In early January, I had the opportunity to attend CMS Kickoff 2026 in Florida (St. Petersburg/Tampa) as a representative of b13. CMS Kickoff is known for bringing together people from very different CMS backgrounds: enterprise vendors, agencies, analysts, open source communities, and end users. This diversity of perspectives is what makes the conference particularly valuable.
As part of the broader TYPO3 community presence at the event, CMS Kickoff offered a valuable outside view: how our topics, challenges, and solutions compare on a global stage—particularly beyond the European market.
As expected, AI was a dominant theme throughout the conference. Many talks explored how artificial intelligence is changing content creation, agency workflows, and CMS architectures. A few sessions stood out to me in particular.
Shifts in the Agency Landscape
In her talk “Shift Happens”, Karla Santi, CEO at Blend Interactive, shared insights into the current state, outlook, and expectations within the agency world in the United States, based in part on survey data gathered across agencies.
Several of these themes felt very familiar. She described how, over the past year, agencies have experienced longer decision-making cycles on the client side, with more effort required to get projects started at all. Budget constraints have increasingly led to projects being split into smaller phases or sub-projects rather than large, long-term engagements. As a result, agencies have had to adapt their processes, planning, and positioning.
What made the talk especially valuable was how strongly these observations resonated with our own experiences in Europe. Seeing these patterns framed as part of a broader, global shift was encouraging—and helped place our day-to-day challenges at b13 into a wider context.
AI and the Content Supply Chain
Another highlight was “AI-Enabling the Content Supply Chain” by George Chang (Hexagon). Rather than focusing on AI as a generic add-on, the talk emphasized the importance of preparing systems structurally for meaningful AI integration.
The core idea: AI can only produce useful results for editors if it is grounded in well-defined content models, metadata, and workflows. In a CMS context, this means enabling scenarios where editors can, for example, generate an initial draft for a new page that already matches the intended structure and purpose of that page.
This perspective aligns closely with how we think about CMS architecture: AI is most effective when it builds on solid foundations rather than trying to replace them. TYPO3 already provides a strong basis for this, and at b13 we work with semantically structured content models for our clients—an approach that clearly aligns with where the industry is heading.
Digital Sovereignty from a US Perspective
Particularly interesting for us as a European agency was Karim Marucchi’s (CEO at Crowd Favorite) talk “Why Europe’s Push for Digital Sovereignty Matters to US Enterprises (and What to Do About It)”.
The talk highlighted how European legislation and concepts such as data protection, data residency, and privacy are perceived—and increasingly need to be taken into account—outside of Europe. Rather than treating these topics as purely regulatory concerns, Karim made it clear that companies should actively prepare for them, because these questions will inevitably arise.
A key takeaway was a practical checklist Karim presented, aimed at CMS vendors and agencies. This checklist helps clarify the questions customers are likely to ask in the future and enables organizations to develop qualified, well-founded answers in advance—so they are not caught unprepared when these discussions start.
For us, this reinforced the relevance of topics we have been dealing with for years, and showed how European perspectives are increasingly shaping international expectations.
Open Source in 2026: A Roundtable Discussion
A defining element of CMS Kickoff is its roundtable discussions. At the table “What now? Open Source CMS in 2026”, moderated by Roger Williams (Community Manager at Kinsta), we discussed the role of open source with participants from very different market segments.
What made this exchange valuable was the mix of viewpoints: people fully committed to proprietary systems, hybrid approaches, and open source. As representatives of an open source ecosystem, it was refreshing to discuss assumptions, concerns, and expectations openly—and to realize how often open source solutions are still judged based on outdated perceptions.
When “Solved Problems” Reappear
One interesting moment came from a short talk focused on caching. From a TYPO3 perspective, this felt almost surprising: caching has long been a solved problem for us, thanks to TYPO3’s built-in caching framework.
It was a reminder that challenges considered fundamental in one ecosystem may already be largely invisible in another. This kind of contrast is one of the strengths of cross-system conferences like CMS Kickoff.
CMS Idol Contest: TYPO3 on Stage
The CMS Idol Contest added a lighter but insightful element to the conference. Different systems had six minutes each to present themselves to the audience and jury.
TYPO3 Ambassador Mathias Bolt Lesniak showcased a new backend feature for the simple creation and management of QR codes and finished in second place, just a few votes behind the winner—a strong result and a good example of how practical, editor-focused features can resonate with a broad audience.
Takeaways
CMS Kickoff 2026 was an intense conference: many conversations, many new contacts, and a remarkably open exchange across system boundaries. For me, it was less about individual tools or features and more about perspective—understanding where our own experiences fit into a larger, international context.
Janus Boye and the team at Boye & Co did an excellent job bringing together experts from very different areas. I found the format refreshing, and having colleagues like Florian and Benni already involved in the CMS Experts groups, I can only echo the consistently positive feedback around this diverse and open community.
Events like this confirm that topics such as AI readiness, open source sustainability, and digital sovereignty are no longer niche concerns. They are shaping the future of CMS and digital projects worldwide—and they are topics we at b13 will continue to engage with actively.