WordCamp Asia 2026 wrapped up in Mumbai from April 9 to 11, and it was everything a flagship WordCamp should be: packed, electric, and full of the conversations that shape where WordPress goes next. The event brought together 2,200+ people from across the globe, with 1,500+ joining the Contributor Day, and the WPVibes team was right in the middle of it. Eight of us made the trip, and every one of us came back buzzing.
This was not a conference we simply attended. It was a conference we helped build, contributed to, spoke at, and volunteered across. From program co-leadership to a Core AI table lead role, from a panel on stage to Education table contributions, from volunteer duty across the event floor to conversations that ran long past every session. Here is our story from Mumbai.
How did the WPVibes team contribute to WordCamp Asia 2026?
Eight WPVibes team members traveled to Mumbai, and our roles spanned program leadership, a panel appearance, Contributor Day organizing, a Core AI table lead, Education table contribution, and volunteering across the three days. Looking back, it still surprises us how much ground the team covered.
Pooja Derashri served as Co-Lead of the Program Team, responsible for speaker selection, session curation, and scheduling across the entire three-day event. That is the kind of behind-the-scenes work that shapes what everyone else experiences at a WordCamp, and she led it with real care.
Anand Upadhyay was one of the organizers of the Contributor Day team and also spoke on the Education Initiatives panel on day two.
Gajendra Singh led the Core AI table on Contributor Day.
Hardik Sharma served as a contributor buddy at the Education table.
Priyanshi Vijayvargiya and Rashi Gupta volunteered across the three days of the event.
The whole team kept moving, kept contributing, and kept the energy up from the moment Contributor Day opened.
It was a privilege to co-lead the program for WCAsia 2026, From thoughtful discussions to crafting a schedule that balances, technical insights, real-world experiences, and the vibrant energy of the WordPress community.
– Pooja Derashri
How did the WPVibes team contribute on Contributor Day?
Contributor Day on April 9 was where the event really kicked off for us. Over 1,500 people gathered at the Jio World Convention Centre to work on WordPress itself, and the energy was unreal. Two of our team members took on active contribution roles, and both of them had days they will remember for a long time.
Gajendra served as Table Lead for the Core AI team, and with AI sitting at the center of WordPress’s current direction, it was one of the most active tables in the room. His job was to guide contributors on where to start, walk them through the ongoing work, and help people understand how AI fits into the WordPress roadmap. The moment that stood out from his day: contributors actually lined up at the table to talk with him, many of them long-time followers of his work. That kind of welcome reminds you that consistent community presence compounds, and Contributor Day is where you see it in real time.
Hardik spent his Contributor Day buddying at the Education table, and Campus Connect was the conversation he kept having all day. He walked contributors through how Campus Connect started, how it has scaled from the Ajmer pilot into Costa Rica, Poland, Bangladesh, and Croatia, and how community members can bring it to their own cities and campuses. Several contributors left the table with clear next steps to start their own Campus Connect chapters, which is exactly the kind of ripple effect a Contributor Day is built to create.
Leading the Core AI table at WCAsia 2026 was an incredible experience. From welcoming first-time contributors to seeing them become collaborators, the energy at the table was something I’ll always remember.
– Gajendra Singh
What did the Education Initiatives panel at WordCamp Asia 2026 cover?
Day two brought one of the moments the team was most excited about. On April 10, Anand joined a panel on Education Initiatives in the WordPress Ecosystem, moderated by Raitis Sevelis alongside fellow panelist Maciej Pilarski. The conversation centered on one big question: how do we move students from just learning about open source to actively contributing to it?
The panel walked through what the speakers called an education runway, a structured path that takes a student from first exposure to long-term contributor. Three core initiatives sit at the heart of it: WordPress Campus Connect, which takes WordPress directly onto college campuses; Student Clubs, which keep the momentum going after a Campus Connect visit through student-led peer meetups; and WordPress Credits, a contribution-based internship program under the WordPress Foundation, already running across 18 universities. A fourth piece, an educator training program for faculty, is in the works.
A few students in the room shared how these programs have already shaped their journey, from a single campus workshop into running a student club or joining the Credits program. WPVibes sponsored Riddhima Upadhyay, a Student Club organizer at Government Women Engineering College, Ajmer, to attend WordCamp Asia 2026, and she was one of the student voices who spoke on stage alongside the panel.
You can watch the full panel discussion on YouTube.
What insights did the WPVibes team bring back from Mumbai?
Beyond the sessions themselves, Mumbai gave us hallway conversations, workshop takeaways, and fresh thinking on where WordPress is heading next. Five themes stood out across the sessions our team attended and the builders we spoke with.
1. AI as a shift from building for users to building for agents. The Abilities API and MCP are becoming the new hooks of the AI era. Websites are evolving into networks of interacting agents, both visiting and site-based, and that shift is already changing how we think about plugin architecture.
2. Non-commodity content and entity-first optimization. Search engines and AI tools are moving well beyond keyword matching. Structured, machine-readable content with clear entity relationships is becoming the real differentiator in how content gets discovered, cited, and trusted.
3. WordPress as a programmable platform via AI and MCP. AI combined with MCP can manage, build, and automate WordPress end-to-end. The opportunity to build agent skills tailored to specific codebases and design systems is early, practical, and genuinely exciting.
4. Scalable design systems and user-centered building. Designing reusable components, patterns, and templates instead of one-off solutions keeps products adaptable rather than rigid. Thinking from a non-technical user’s perspective is a product-building discipline, not an afterthought.
5. Community and contribution as a growth strategy. Every conversation at the event reinforced that consistent community presence builds trust faster than product marketing alone. It shapes how we think about our roadmap, our events, and our relationships with other builders.
What did the hallway conversations in Mumbai add up to?
WordCamps are built on sessions, but the hallway is where most of the real work happens. Our team came away from Mumbai with dozens of conversations that sharpened how we are thinking about the year ahead.
We talked with agency owners about how they are using AI in their workflows, how they maintain code quality across teams, and how they balance services with product-building. We traded ideas with fellow Elementor and Bricks builders, spent time at the Google, Elementor, and WordPress.com booths, and met community members planning Campus Connect in their own cities. Every exchange added a new angle to the direction we are already moving in.
Where does WPVibes go from here on the product side?
The conversations and sessions in Mumbai sharpened our thinking on what to build next across our plugin portfolio. We are going deeper on AI in our own workflow, and where it genuinely helps end users, we are integrating it into our plugins too. We are investing in design systems that scale with our products, and leaning into agent-ready architecture where it makes sense. There is a lot of ground to cover in the year ahead, and we are moving at full speed.
A thank you to the WordCamp Asia 2026 team and the Jio World Convention Centre
An event of this scale does not happen by accident. It took months of work from an organizing team of volunteers who gave their time, attention, and care to build an event that welcomed over 2,200+ people from around the world. Our thanks go out to every single one of them.
The program, the speaker lineup, the Contributor Day setup, the volunteer coordination, the accessibility, the hospitality, everything about the event reflected the care that went into it. Flagship WordCamps are hard to organize, and this one set a genuinely high bar. To the entire organizing team: thank you for putting it all together and making it feel effortless from our side.
A special shout-out for the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai as the venue. The space, the acoustics, the layout across session halls, the Contributor Day floor, the hallway and networking areas, all of it held up beautifully across three intense days. We heard it from speakers, attendees, sponsors, and organizers throughout the event, and we agree with what many said: the Jio World Convention Centre is one of the best flagship WordCamp venues to date.
WordCamp Asia 2026 was a reminder of why we keep showing up for this community. Three days of contribution, conversation, and connection, and a team that came back with a clearer view of what to build next and a deeper appreciation for the people we get to build alongside. If you want to see what we are working on, take a look at our plugins, or connect with any of the team. We are always up for a good WordPress conversation.