--- title: "Craft CMS 6 Is Bringing Major Changes: What We Learned at Dot One Antwerp 2026" date: 2026-11-02T13:46:00+01:00 author: admin canonical_url: "https://cstudios.digital/blog/craft-cms-6-is-bringing-major-changes-what-we-learned-at-dot-one-antwerp-2026" section: Blog --- ✦ Mgr. Kitti Tóth \| 02.11.2026 \| 13 min čítania # CRAFT CMS 6 IS BRINGING MAJOR CHANGES: WHAT WE LEARNED AT DOT ONE ANTWERP 2026 ![](https://cstudios.sk//uploads/images/858345503_1781531830260991_3025032417350111222_n.jpg) **A redesigned control panel, up to 5x faster database operations, a move to Laravel, and AI built directly into the CMS. Craft CMS is preparing for one of the biggest technological shifts in its history, and we were there to hear about it firsthand.** ## A Fresh Perspective on the Future of Craft CMS from Antwerp In October, three members of the Cstudios team travelled to Belgium for Dot One Antwerp 2026, where more than 120 developers and industry professionals from the European Craft CMS community came together to discuss the platform's future. We also had the opportunity to meet **Brandon Kelly, the founder of Craft CMS**, and speak directly with the people building the platform about what they are working on and where Craft is headed over the next few years. The main focus of the conference was the upcoming **Craft CMS 6**. From the very first presentations, it became clear that this is far more than a routine version update. Craft is rethinking its technical foundations, content management experience, and automation capabilities, with artificial intelligence set to play a significant role. We returned from Antwerp with valuable technical insights and a much clearer picture of what these changes could mean for businesses running their websites and e-commerce platforms on Craft CMS. Here are **seven key takeaways** that stood out to us. ## 1. A Redesigned Craft CMS 6 Control Panel: Fewer Clicks, Better Content Management One of the most noticeable changes coming to Craft CMS 6 is its redesigned control panel. Craft has always stood out for its flexibility, allowing developers to tailor the content management experience to the needs of each project. Version 6 takes that flexibility further, with a stronger focus on usability and more efficient day-to-day workflows. The new interface is cleaner, easier to navigate, and better suited to working across different devices. But the improvements go well beyond visual design. - **Built-in content approval workflows** Imagine a marketing team where one person writes a blog post, another reviews it, and a third gives final approval before publication. Today, these workflows often rely on long email threads, chat messages, or separate project management tools. Craft CMS 6 will introduce support for multi-stage approval workflows directly within the control panel. Content such as blog posts and product entries will be able to move through multiple review stages before going live, with email notifications alerting team members when their input or approval is required. AI will also be able to support parts of the process, such as checking spelling, reviewing writing style, or verifying whether content follows a brand's tone-of-voice guidelines. - **Field-level comments and feedback** Another useful addition is the ability to leave comments directly on individual content fields. If a headline needs rewriting, an image needs replacing, or a paragraph requires approval, team members will be able to attach feedback exactly where it belongs. That means fewer screenshots, less back-and-forth, and no more guessing which part of a page someone is referring to. - **Improved change tracking** Craft CMS 6 will also offer more detailed content change tracking. Administrators will be able to see who changed what and when, making it easier to review edits and keep track of activity. This will be especially useful for organisations where several editors and content managers work on the same website. - **Simpler e-commerce and multilingual content management** For e-commerce projects, required supplementary fields will move into a sidebar, making product editing screens less cluttered and giving editors more room to focus on the content itself. Multilingual websites will also benefit from clearer visual indicators showing which language version is currently being edited. It's a relatively small improvement, but one that could prevent a common mistake: accidentally updating the wrong language version. - **Smarter image handling** Craft CMS 6 will introduce new image processing capabilities, including automatic dominant-colour detection. The system will be able to identify the dominant colour in an image and use it, for example, as a placeholder background while the image loads. The control panel will also be built around a unified design system, allowing third-party plugins to follow the same visual conventions as Craft itself. **The goal is a content management experience where creating, reviewing, and approving content becomes simpler and more consistent.** ## 2. Craft CMS Is Moving to Laravel. What Does That Mean for Website Performance? One of the biggest announcements at the conference concerned the platform's underlying architecture. **Craft CMS 6 is moving to Laravel, one of the most widely used PHP frameworks.** Website visitors are unlikely to notice this change directly. For developers, however, it represents a significant shift. Laravel offers a mature ecosystem of tools, libraries, and established development patterns. This should make it easier to build new features, develop modern application architectures, and extend existing projects without reinventing the wheel. - **Up to 5x faster database operations** The conference also included concrete performance benchmarks. Optimisations to Craft's database layer, particularly around its main content table, have delivered **up to fivefold performance improvements in certain operations**. This matters most for larger, content-heavy projects. An online store with thousands of products or a publishing platform with a large article library constantly reads and writes data. The more efficiently these operations are handled, the better the system can cope as content volumes grow. There is, however, an important distinction. A fivefold improvement in specific database operations does not mean every website will automatically become five times faster after upgrading. Overall website performance still depends on factors such as code quality, hosting infrastructure, caching, and the features implemented. - **Expanded database support** Craft CMS 6 will also offer greater flexibility in database selection. Alongside MySQL and PostgreSQL, the platform will introduce dedicated MariaDB support and native SQLite support. SQLite could be particularly useful for smaller projects that don't require a separate database server. For developers, this means more freedom to choose the right technical architecture. For clients, it creates opportunities to build solutions that are better matched to the size, complexity, and requirements of their projects. ## 3. AI Is Becoming Part of Everyday Website Management Artificial intelligence was, unsurprisingly, one of the most discussed topics at Dot One. But the conversation wasn't about adding yet another AI writing tool. Instead, Craft CMS is working towards integrating AI directly into its control panel and everyday content management workflows. - **One integration layer for multiple AI services** Craft is introducing a standardised approach to AI service integration. Rather than requiring every plugin to maintain its own separate AI configuration, different extensions will be able to share a common setup for connecting to AI providers. This functionality is planned to become available in Craft CMS 5 before becoming a built-in part of Craft CMS 6. In practice, that should make AI integrations easier to manage, more consistent, and less fragmented. - **Automating repetitive content tasks** Consider an online store that regularly adds hundreds of new products. Each product needs descriptions, images, alt text, and the correct categories or tags. Individually, these tasks may seem straightforward. At scale, they become extremely time-consuming. This is exactly where AI could make a meaningful difference. At the conference, we learned more about plans to automate tasks such as: - Checking spelling, grammar, and brand tone of voice. - Generating image alt text. - Automatically tagging and categorising images. - Identifying the main subject of an image and applying intelligent cropping. - Creating, importing, and processing content through AI agents. For organisations managing large volumes of content, these capabilities could significantly reduce manual work and free up valuable time. - **Dedicated access permissions for AI** Of course, greater automation also raises important security questions. If an AI-powered tool can access website content, it must be clear what information it can read, what it can edit, and which actions it is allowed to perform. Craft CMS is therefore planning dedicated AI roles with granular, role-based access permissions. For example, an AI agent could be authorised to draft blog posts without having permission to publish them. Another agent could process and categorise images without being granted access to sensitive customer information. This level of control will be crucial for businesses adopting AI in real-world workflows. **The question is no longer simply what AI can do, but what it should be allowed to do.** ## 4. Websites Will Increasingly Need to Work for AI Agents, Not Just Human Visitors For years, website development has focused primarily on human users. How quickly can someone find a product? Where do they look for important information? How many steps does it take to complete a purchase? With AI becoming more capable, a new consideration is emerging. **AI agents will increasingly be able to browse websites, retrieve information, and complete tasks on behalf of users.** Imagine a customer looking for a specific product. Instead of visiting several online stores and comparing products manually, they could simply tell an AI assistant what they need. The assistant could then search for relevant products, compare technical specifications, and gather the information needed to make a decision. This changes what websites need to deliver. It's no longer enough for content to be easy for people to navigate. Information must also be technically accessible and clearly structured so automated systems can interpret it reliably. #### **What does this mean for SEO and GEO?** Traditional SEO remains essential. What is changing is how people discover and access information. GEO, or **Generative Engine Optimisation**, is becoming increasingly relevant as brands look for ways to make their content more accessible, understandable, and useful to AI-powered search systems. This puts greater emphasis on well-organised content, technical accessibility, and clearly defined relationships between different pieces of information. Craft CMS has an advantage here because of its flexibility. Developers can create custom content models and structured fields tailored to the requirements of each project, rather than forcing everything into a rigid, predefined format. As search continues to evolve, this kind of structured content will become increasingly valuable. ## 5. Upgrading from Craft CMS 5 to Craft CMS 6 Won't Be Business as Usual A major change to a CMS's underlying architecture naturally raises an important question: what happens to existing websites? The Craft CMS team is developing migration tools designed to make the transition to version 6 easier. The planned improvements also include a more capable data migration system. Another interesting development is the introduction of official AI knowledge packages intended to help developers update existing codebases and adapt them to Craft's new technical architecture. - **Different projects will need different migration strategies** Not every website has the same level of complexity. A small corporate website with a handful of content sections has very different requirements from a large e-commerce platform or a custom digital product developed over several years. For simpler websites, a direct upgrade may be the most practical route. For larger systems with extensive custom functionality and integrations, however, rebuilding the technical foundation and migrating existing content into a cleaner architecture may make more sense. AI could also help automate certain development and migration tasks. At Cstudios, we won't be taking a one-size-fits-all approach. Each project will need to be assessed individually, taking its architecture, functionality, and future requirements into account. **The goal isn't simply to get a website running on the latest version. It's to make sure it remains stable, reliable, and ready for future development after the migration.** ## 6. Web Security in the Age of AI: Why Writing Code Faster Isn't Enough Security was another major topic at the conference. October saw serious security incidents affecting the PHP ecosystem, prompting discussions within the developer community about what some referred to as *Black October*. Cloudflare's security infrastructure and rapid response played an important role in mitigating the attacks. These incidents also sparked a broader conversation about how web security is changing as AI becomes more widely adopted. **AI is accelerating development. It's also accelerating vulnerability discovery.** Today, AI tools can help developers build a working web application prototype in a matter of hours. But a functioning prototype is not the same as a production-ready, secure application. AI-generated code can contain programming errors, misconfigured permissions, or security vulnerabilities that may not become apparent during normal use. At the same time, AI is increasingly being used to automate vulnerability discovery and support attempts to compromise web applications. This makes the technology behind a website, and the experience of the people building it, more important than ever. Using an established CMS with active development, regular security updates, and a strong developer community offers an important advantage. But the choice of CMS alone does not guarantee security. Code quality, secure server configuration, properly configured access controls, timely updates, and regular security reviews remain essential. **AI can build software. But it takes experience to build software a business can safely rely on.** ## 7. A New Craft CMS Project Showcase and the Next Conference in Copenhagen Beyond the technical announcements, we were also pleased to see the introduction of an official showcase for projects built with Craft CMS. The initiative aims to highlight outstanding websites from around the world and demonstrate what the platform can achieve through real-world implementations. At Cstudios, we've worked on several projects we'd be excited to submit to the showcase. But Dot One Antwerp was about more than product announcements. Meeting Brandon Kelly in person, exchanging ideas with fellow developers, and speaking with people who work with Craft CMS every day were just as valuable as the presentations themselves. These conversations gave us fresh perspectives, practical insights, and a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the Craft community. We're already planning to attend the next edition of the conference, which will take place in Copenhagen. ## What Are We Taking Away from Antwerp? Craft CMS 6 offers a clear indication of where modern content management systems are heading. Simpler content management, more powerful technical foundations, broader automation capabilities, and AI agents that can gradually take over repetitive tasks. But one principle remains unchanged. **Technology should serve the real needs of the business, not the other way around.** Not every website needs dozens of automated workflows. And not every project needs AI integration from day one. What matters is knowing where these technologies can genuinely add value and where they would simply introduce unnecessary complexity. **As an official Craft CMS Partner, we're pleased to have the opportunity to follow these developments closely and bring what we learn into our clients' projects.** Because a well-built website isn't just about what it can do today. It's also about how well it can adapt as the business grows and its needs change over the years. **Planning a new website or e-commerce platform? 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