The Future of Drupal According to the Developer Survey 2025: Lessons and Experiences from ParallelDevs

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For more than two decades, Drupal has been one of the most reliable and versatile platforms for building complex digital experiences. Its open-source nature, scalability, and security have made it a go-to choice for governments, universities, NGOs, and enterprises around the world.

Every year, surveys shed light on how the community evolves and how relevant the platform remains. The Drupal Developer Survey 2025, conducted by Ironstar with 753 responses from 58 countries, confirms a dual reality: Drupal remains strong for large-scale projects, but faces the challenge of renewing its talent base and proving its relevance in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by headless architectures, PWAs, and artificial intelligence.

At ParallelDevs, with more than 15 years of experience working with Drupal, we’ve lived through these transformations first-hand. One of our most recent projects is the Cultural Agenda for the Ministry of Culture and Youth of Costa Rica, built with Drupal 11 as the backend and Next.js as the decoupled PWA frontend. This type of project clearly demonstrates where Drupal is heading and how to leverage its strengths in a constantly evolving digital landscape.

Drupal in Transition

The 2025 Survey revealed a key insight: while most of the community still trusts Drupal, optimism about its future dropped compared to the previous year. In 2024, 80% of developers were optimistic about Drupal’s future; in 2025, that number fell to 64%, with more respondents selecting “Not sure” rather than outright negative views (Ironstar, 2025).

This doesn’t mean rejection—it means greater uncertainty. And it makes sense: Drupal is no longer competing to be the “most popular CMS” alongside WordPress or Shopify. Its natural space is projects that require:

• Advanced content management, with multiple users and editorial workflows.
• Multisite scalability, running multiple brands or departments from a single codebase.
• Accessibility and compliance, especially in government and education.
• Integration with modern architectures, such as mobile apps, PWAs, and decoupled frontends.

The challenge is to communicate clearly that Drupal is not a CMS for every project, but a strategic platform for organizations with long-term vision.

Artificial Intelligence and New Opportunities

The Survey also revealed something remarkable: nearly 8 out of 10 Drupal developers already use AI tools, up from 50% in 2024 (Ironstar, 2025). Adoption is fast, and it’s not a passing trend—it’s becoming the new normal.

At ParallelDevs, we’ve started applying AI within Drupal ecosystems in areas like:

• Automatic taxonomy tagging, reducing editorial workload.
• Content assistance, generating summaries or variations of text.
• Automated QA, detecting accessibility or performance issues before production.

Looking forward, projects like the Cultural Agenda could leverage AI to recommend events to users based on browsing history or automatically classify cultural activities into categories.

This intersection between Drupal and AI is one of the biggest opportunities for the coming years.

The Talent and Community Challenge

Perhaps the most concerning finding of the Survey is the lack of younger developers. Only one respondent was under 21, and the 21–29 age group continues to shrink (Ironstar, 2025).

In Costa Rica—and in many other regions—we’ve noticed a pattern: universities and technical programs often focus on teaching technologies like Java or .NET, which remain staples in corporate and legacy environments. At the same time, younger developers exploring personal projects or academic research often gravitate toward “sexier” stacks like Node.js, React, or other JavaScript frameworks that dominate the startup and open-source ecosystem.

This means Drupal doesn’t always appear on their radar during their formative years. However, when we introduce junior developers to real-world projects, they quickly realize Drupal’s strategic role in building large-scale, secure, and scalable platforms—something few of those “sexier” tools can offer out of the box.

That is why at ParallelDevs we have kept our internship program active for more than 10 years, bringing in two groups per year of 2–4 interns each. This program has become a bridge between the technologies taught in academia and the professional-grade practices required in the industry. Many of our interns transition into full-time roles, strengthening both our team and the Drupal community with fresh talent.

At a global level, initiatives like Drupal IXP are also helping lower these barriers, offering students and early-career professionals a path into Drupal through practical experiences, mentorship, and opportunities to engage with the international community. Together, local efforts like ours and global initiatives like IXP are critical to ensuring Drupal remains vibrant and sustainable in the years to come.

Competition and Drupal’s Place

The Survey also highlights how Drupal compares to other platforms. Frameworks like Laravel received 85% recommendation rates, while Shopify was also highly regarded. In contrast, WordPress continues to polarize opinions, with only 28% of developers recommending it (Ironstar, 2025).

The key question isn’t whether Drupal can compete on popularity, but where it makes sense to choose Drupal. The answer is clear:

• When security is non-negotiable.
• When extreme flexibility in content modeling is required.
• When accessibility and compliance are mandatory.
• When the project demands multichannel scalability.

That’s why Drupal remains the preferred choice for governments, NGOs, and large enterprises. And that’s why at ParallelDevs we continue to use it as the foundation for high-impact projects.

Drupal, Governments, and NGOs: Why Independence Matters

Beyond technology trends, the Survey also reinforces a critical lesson for public institutions and NGOs: long-term sustainability depends on choosing open, secure, and scalable technologies that avoid dependency on a single vendor.

Vendor lock-in is one of the greatest risks governments and large organizations face. It creates problems such as:

• No access to source code, preventing audits or adaptations.
• Total dependency on the vendor for every security or performance update, leaving institutions vulnerable to their responsiveness.
• Rebuilding entire platforms when changing vendors, leading to high costs and loss of continuity.
• Business risks of the vendor itself: acquisitions, bankruptcies, or operational issues can suddenly disrupt critical public services.

This is where Drupal and open source make the difference. Because it’s open-source and backed by a global community, institutions benefit from:

• Full control of source code, with freedom to audit or modify.
• Ongoing security updates, supported by a dedicated Security Team and an active ecosystem.
• Proven scalability, powering high-volume portals, multisite environments, and multilingual contexts.
• Vendor independence, ensuring continuity regardless of political or commercial changes.

For governments and NGOs, adopting Drupal isn’t just a technical choice—it’s a strategic decision to protect public investment, ensure continuity, and safeguard technological independence in the long run.

Tools and Practices Reinforcing Adoption

The Survey also points to tool adoption trends. DDEV has become the standard local environment, with 93% recommendation rates, while Cloudflare (81%) and Fastly (78%) dominate the CDN space. By contrast, Azure received only 29% recommendation (Ironstar, 2025).

In projects like the Cultural Agenda, we aligned with these practices by implementing:

• Separate environments (DEV, STG, PROD) with CI/CD workflows.
• Automated monitoring with real-time alerts.
• Global CDN delivery, ensuring performance even in areas with poor connectivity.

This shows that working with Drupal today means working with a modern, professional stack, not outdated tools.

Looking Ahead

The 2025 Survey data reflects uncertainty, but also an undeniable truth: Drupal is not disappearing—it is transforming.

Drupal’s future doesn’t lie in competing with lightweight CMSs or closed SaaS platforms. Its role is to be the strategic backend powering modern digital experiences:

• PWAs and decoupled frontends.
• AI-powered integrations.
• Large-scale multisite and multichannel management.
• Compliance with advanced security and accessibility standards.

At ParallelDevs, we’re convinced this is the right path. We’ve proven it with projects like the Cultural Agenda, and we’ll continue applying this vision in every solution: leveraging Drupal as a solid core, complemented by emerging technologies that amplify its value.

The future of Drupal is not linear or uniform. It depends on how the community and organizations leverage its strengths while addressing its challenges. The 2025 Developer Survey acts as a mirror: it shows confidence in the platform, but also highlights the need to attract younger talent and keep innovating.

At ParallelDevs, we’re certain that Drupal will remain a key player in high-impact projects. Our experience with NGOs, Costa Rican government institutions, and other developments demonstrates that when combined with headless architectures, PWAs, AI, and accessibility-first design, Drupal is not just relevant—it is a true driver of digital innovation.