At the end of January 2026, Drupal CMS 2.0 was officially launched. It's a major milestone for Drupal, which continues to combine power and flexibility, while making its use much more accessible.
While Drupal Core, now in version 11, remains the robust platform you know, Drupal CMS is a product built on top of it, offering ready-to-use solutions and features to help you launch your projects more quickly.
At bluedrop.fr, we are closely following this development. We are already testing Drupal CMS 2.0 and plan to integrate Drupal Canvas directly into our starter, so that our clients can benefit from it.
Let's take a look at what Drupal CMS 2.0 actually changes.
Why is Drupal launching Drupal CMS?
For 25 years, Drupal has been an open source reference, chosen by governments, universities, and large companies for its security, scalability, and performance.
Yet a stigma has stuck with it: getting started requires advanced technical expertise. For site owners, this meant hiring experienced developers and planning for significant budgets and timelines.
As a result, while Drupal was perfect for large organizations, it remained largely inaccessible to SMEs and startups.
With Drupal CMS, everything changes: Drupal becomes accessible and fast, while retaining its power. Users can now create and manage sites more easily, more quickly, and at lower cost, opening the CMS to a new market.
Drupal CMS 2.0: what are the differences with Drupal Core?
Drupal CMS is not just an improved version of Drupal Core: it’s a complete product, designed to speed up the launch of websites with best practices built in.
It offers:
- ready-to-use website templates,
- simplified installation of modules and features,
- intuitive content editing,
- preconfigured modular components,
- and integrated AI features.
What’s new in Drupal CMS 2.0?
Site Templates: Start with an Almost Complete Foundation
Drupal CMS 2.0 introduces its first official template.
As a reminder, Drupal aims to create a marketplace for templates. The idea behind templates: to provide a nearly complete starting point for a specific use case, with predefined structure, design, and components.
From now on, it offers two templates:
- The Byte template, set up as a marketing site for a SaaS product (modern design, product pages, blog, newsletter signup, pricing tables, contact form).
- The Starter template: a neutral foundation ready to be customized.
Drupal Canvas: the visual page builder at the heart of the experience
The major innovation of Drupal CMS 2.0 is undoubtedly Drupal Canvas, a visual and modular page creation tool. An impressive tool that brings Drupal closer to the simplicity of WordPress or Webflow, while maintaining the flexibility and power that made it successful.
What are the main features of Drupal Canvas?
- Direct visual editing: edit texts, images, and components without using forms or previews; you make changes directly on the final layout.
- Drag and drop: move your components wherever you want.
- Undo / Redo: experiment with your ideas risk-free, with complete modification history.
- Templates: start with a solid, easily customizable foundation.
- Component library: build your page using a library of customizable components (grid, form, testimonials, accordions, menu, footer, etc.).
Let's explore the Drupal Canvas interface together
The installation is guided step by step, it's very easy to get started!
- Name the site.
- Choose a site template
As previously explained, you can choose between two complete templates: Starter or Byte.
- Navigate the administration interface
A few clicks later, you'll arrive directly at the admin back-office interface. Here you'll find the very modern Gin administration theme.
As you can see, the settings are located in the side menus on the right and left. The right-hand one, called “Top tasks”, offers a selection of the most useful features:
- content creation,
- adding extensions,
- module selection,
- creating content types,
- changing the site's appearance
- or even inviting users.
- Build your pages with Canvas
To access the Canvas page editor, simply click on an existing content item inherited from the selected template. The Canvas interface is intuitively organized, similar to well-known page builders:
- Top bar: navigation, zoom control, responsive preview (mobile, tablet, desktop), save options.
- Left panel (Layers): list of current components, access to the component library, list of Canvas pages, access to templates.
- Center: page preview with live editing preview.
- Right panel: component properties, page settings and configuration options.
In this case, we chose the Byte template, which offers a wide range of preconfigured components.
So you can start by replacing the template information with your own. To do this, simply click on an element (card, button, title, image…) and edit the content via the right sidebar.
Here, we have notably changed the background color of the card. We could just as well have removed the border, changed the layout of the card (vertical or horizontal), added a link, modified the image, the text, etc. In short, you can pretty much do anything easily! It works very much like our own Drupal starter.
To add new components, you would instead go to the menu on the left, where you'll find a vast library of blocks: price card, accordion, button, footer, customer testimonial, image, icon, text, navigation bar…
In general, navigation and editing are greatly facilitated since the sidebar menu also allows you to move from one page to another from the Canvas interface.
Integration of AI in Canvas
AI is integrated via an optional add-on module. It does not replace humans but acts as a production assistant.
What AI enables:
- Generation of landing pages from a simple prompt.
- Administration assistant for creating content types, fields, or taxonomies.
- Automatic generation of alternative (alt) texts for images.
- Centralized dashboard to manage AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral AI, etc.).
Our Drupal Starter: your ready-to-use foundation
Long before the arrival of Drupal CMS, Drupal was already giving its users the possibility to make it a ready-to-use product. In fact, that's what we did at bluedrop.fr by developing our own Drupal starter, a pre-configured Drupal base that keeps the spirit of Drupal CMS but adapts it to our clients' needs:
- Pre-structured content types and components
- Preinstalled modules (performance, security, SEO, accessibility…)
- Optimized technical configuration
- An architecture designed for scalability
- Layout tools to allow contributors to create freely without coding (Layout builder)
Our starter is therefore a customized version of Drupal, which we use as a base for all our projects.
When we start a project, we customize this base:
- Adaptation to the brand guidelines (colors, fonts, logo)
- Adaptation of the component library to the project's brand guidelines
- Addition of project-specific features using recipes
Will Drupal CMS revolutionize the way we design websites?
A Norman's answer: yes… and no!
As we have seen, Drupal CMS and Drupal Canvas mark a major strategic turning point for the CMS. It now positions the solution as a credible competitor to low-code solutions and more “mainstream” CMS platforms.
Indeed, it clearly opens up Drupal to:
- lighter projects,
- autonomous marketing teams,
- mini-sites or quick-to-launch campaigns,
- simple needs requiring agility.
However, at bluedrop.fr, we mostly work on advanced projects with complex architectures, API connections, specific templating systems, data reporting, and advanced business logic. These projects require strong technical expertise and custom development that page builders cannot replace.
Our approach: intelligent hybridization
Today we are working to combine:
- The new Drupal CMS 2.0 tools
- The smooth editing experience of Drupal Canvas
- Our Drupal Starter and its functional “recipes” tailored to project types
In summary, we are evolving our foundation to integrate these innovations, and benefit from the Canvas contribution experience without sacrificing the architectural quality that drives the success of ambitious projects.
Conclusion: Drupal is becoming more accessible, without losing any of its power
With Drupal CMS 2.0 and Drupal Canvas, Drupal becomes more accessible and more competitive compared to low-code solutions, while retaining the robustness it is known for. Projects are completed faster, teams become more autonomous, and AI further speeds up production and improves the contributor experience.
That said, Drupal’s technical depth remains intact. Complex architectures, advanced integrations, and specific business logic continue to find in Drupal a perfectly suited environment.
At bluedrop.fr, we incorporate these advancements into our starter to create an additional performance lever. Drupal is evolving, and so is our approach. Always with the same demand for quality!
Want to find out how our Starter can transform your web project? Contact us today to discuss it and benefit from customized support.
