Drupal CMS 1.0 was released on January 15, 2025. It is the result of the Starshot initiative announced in 2024, and it is the biggest change in how Drupal is packaged and presented in years.

If you already run a Drupal site, or you are choosing a CMS for a new one, here is what it means in practice.

What Drupal CMS is

Drupal CMS is not a new CMS and not a fork. It is Drupal core, the same Drupal 11 that powers large enterprise sites, packaged with a curated set of contributed modules, sensible default configuration and a new installer.

The goal is to make Drupal usable out of the box for people who are not Drupal developers: marketing teams, content editors and smaller organizations who want to build and run a site without first assembling dozens of modules themselves.

Historically, installing Drupal core gave you a capable but very bare system. Getting to a usable marketing site meant choosing and configuring modules for SEO, media, forms, editorial workflow and more. Experienced Drupal teams did this from memory. Everyone else struggled.

What you get

At launch, Drupal CMS includes:

  • An installer that asks what kind of site you are building and which features you want, such as a blog, events, case studies, forms and SEO tools.
  • Recipes, a new Drupal mechanism for adding a packaged feature (content types, configuration and modules together) to a site in one step.
  • Project Browser, which lets site builders find and install modules from the admin interface instead of the command line.
  • A more modern admin experience and editorial defaults aimed at content teams.
  • Optional AI features that can help with tasks like content creation and site building, which you can leave switched off.

A visual page builder, called Experience Builder, is planned for later releases. It is not part of 1.0, and if drag-and-drop page building is your main reason for looking at Drupal CMS, keep that in mind.

How it relates to an existing Drupal site

If you run a Drupal 10 or Drupal 11 site today, nothing changes for you. Drupal CMS does not replace your site and does not require any action.

Because Drupal CMS is built on standard Drupal core and modules, the ideas behind it are still useful to existing sites. Recipes in particular can be applied to an existing site, and the module selection is a good reference for what the community now considers the standard toolkit.

There is no "upgrade to Drupal CMS" button for an existing custom site, and in most cases you would not want one. Your site already has its own content model and configuration.

Who should consider it

Drupal CMS makes the most sense for:

  • New, small to mid-sized marketing sites where the standard features cover most of what is needed.
  • Organizations that liked Drupal's flexibility but found it too heavy to start with.
  • Drupal 7 sites with simple requirements that need a new home now that Drupal 7 has reached end of life.
  • Teams that want editors to manage more of the site without a developer for every change.

It makes less sense for:

  • Large sites with complex content models, integrations or custom workflows. These will still be built on Drupal core with a tailored module set, as they are today.
  • Projects that depend on features planned for later Drupal CMS releases.
  • Sites where the main requirement is a fully custom frontend, such as a React or Gatsby site using Drupal as a headless backend.

Our take

Drupal CMS addresses Drupal's most persistent problem, which was never capability. It was the distance between installing Drupal and having a site that a marketing team could actually use. Closing that gap is good for site owners and good for the Drupal ecosystem.

It is also a 1.0 release. Expect rough edges, and expect some features to mature over the next few releases. For a new site with standard needs, it is worth evaluating now. For a complex site, it is worth watching, and worth borrowing ideas from, while you continue building on Drupal core.

If you are migrating from Drupal 7, add Drupal CMS to the list of options you compare. We explain the other options in our post on what happens to Drupal 7 sites after end of life.

Wondering whether Drupal CMS fits your next site? Ask us and we will give you a straight answer.