Friday 20 March 2026 9am

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IGNITE YOUR DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY:

UMBRACO SPARK V CONFERENCE 2026 - UNVEILING THE FUTURE OF UMBRACO

Join the Umbraco community at Umbraco Spark — Friday, 20 March 2026.

Umbraco Spark focuses on technical, innovation and developer-focused topics and is dedicated to bringing together developers for a day of learning and inspiration.

> Meet our 2026 speakers
> Apply or nominate for a FREE Opportunity ticket
> Read your practical guide to Umbraco Spark 2026

Fri 20 Mar 26 9am

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2026 LINE UP.

We’re thrilled to announce the line up is complete for Umbraco Spark 2026. Meet the speakers below.

This year’s talks span deep technical explorations, practical hands-on demos, forward-thinking perspectives, and even a few fun, unexpected insights — all in one main conference track.

Alongside the main track, an extended hackathon will take place where attendees involved in the Umbraco Hackathon and Package jam on Thursday 19th March can finish up their package ready to bring it to the Package Awards at the end of the conference.

Why. What's in it for you?

  • Innovative and inspiring top-tier talks ranging from in-depth technical talks to lightning talks
  • The epic Umbraco Spark notebook and Spark t-shirt
  • Lunch to fuel you for the afternoon sessions
  • Unlimited tea, coffee and water
  • Extended Hackathon & Package Awards
  • Beers at the end of the day with incredible views over the Harbourside!
  • After party to get to know all your fellow attendees!
  • Also, the 2026 Pre-Spark Umbraco Hackathon & Package Jam (on Thursday 19th March)

Where.

We the Curious is centrally located on Bristol’s harbourside and a few minutes walk from the city centre or a 20-minute walk from Bristol Temple Meads train station.

To find out more about getting to We The Curious, visit their directions page.

To find out more about the accessibility of the venue visit their accessibility page.

For any questions about the conference, please email umbracospark@gibedigital.com.

Date
Fri / 20 Mar 26 / 9AM
Name
Umbraco Spark Innovation Conference
Address
We The Curious Bristol, BS1 5DB
Time
9am - 5pm

Sponsors. Making sparks fly...

If you'd like to sponsor the conference in 2026, we'd love to hear from you at umbracospark@gibedigital.com

Rachel Breeze Development Practice Lead and .NET Developer, Nexer Digital

Rachel is a 2x Microsoft MVP for .NET and Web Development; she is also a 6x Umbraco MVP. Rachel has been a developer for over 25 years, working in the Microsoft .Net stack. She is passionate about accessibility, supporting and encouraging future developers, and in her spare time, she enjoys scuba diving. She also drinks copious amounts of tea.

Umbraco Decisions: Stay, Upgrade, Rewrite

With Umbraco 17 now available, the temptation to upgrade can be strong after all, it has new features and new performance gains, but upgrading isn't always the right choice, and sticking with your current version isn't always the wrong one. Every Umbraco project lives in its own reality. Each project has its own budgets, integrations, risk tolerance, developer capacity, and long-term business goals, all of which shape what "the right path" looks like.

In this talk, we'll explore the full spectrum of options for maintaining an Umbraco site, from staying on the project's current major version to upgrading thoughtfully or even rewriting when it truly makes sense.

Kenn Jacobsen Principal Engineer , Umbraco

Kenn is a 40-something happy developer, currently building friendly stuff at Umbraco.

Other accomplishments include one kid, one girlfriend, countless hours spent playing trads and shanties in pubs, 10+ years in the Umbraco community and 4 times Umbraco MVP.

Umbraco Search - a developer's perspective

Umbraco Search will replace search as we know it in Umbraco today. But what does that really mean?

And what's in it for us as developers?

In this session we'll have a close look at Umbraco Search through the eyes of a developer. We'll cover:

  • The shiny new things.

  • The extensibility model.

  • The impact (and how we can prepare for it).

Expect lots of demos and lots of code!

Carl Sargunar .NET developer and fan of learning new things, then sharing that knowledge, Mondo Media

I've been building websites and apps for various clients for the last 20 years, from running agencies to direct clients, and generally integrating the heck out of systems. I enjoy learning new things and sharing what I've learnt, and I organise the Bristol and South West .NET Meetup, as well as the DDD South West Conference.

DDoS My Desk: Load Balancing Live and Uncut!

Bringing the cloud to the conference, I'll replicate in miniature a scalable, load-balanced environment to host containers and demonstrate concepts around Load Balancing in a fun and interactive way!

Using a cluster of mini-computers, a router and some networking magic (and with a healthy sacrifice to the demo gods), we'll re-create a cloud in a mini-cluster and see how it copes with scaling, load-balancing, outages and downtime. There will be audience participation, there will be live demos, there will almost certainly be chaos but you'll learn key concepts needed to understand how load balancing will help you build resilient and scalable apps while having fun at the same time!

Frédéric Harper Senior Developer Relations Manager, TinyMCE

Frédéric Harper is a seasoned Developer Advocate, and a passionate international speaker with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. Throughout his career, Frédéric has helped thousands of developers succeed by bridging the gap between cutting-edge technologies and developer communities.

Sponsor:

Tiny but mighty: TinyMCE in Umbraco 17

While TinyMCE is no longer Umbraco’s default rich text editor, you can still easily use it to satisfy all your Umraco text editing needs. In this talk, Fred will show you how to get the ball rolling with the TinyMCE Package to keep using the WYSIWYG you love without a fuss, and more importantly, without losing data in the process.

Georgina Bidder Georgina Bidder

Georgina Bidder Umbraco MVP and Developer, true digital

Georgina is a Developer at true in Bristol, she is also part of the Core Collaborators community team and an Umbraco MVP.

A Website, an Email, and an AI Summary walk into a Bar…

Ok, so in a world where OpenAI processes around 2.5 billion prompts per day and around a 5th of those are product related requests. It is clear that the way people are searching online is changing, and the source of their information is changing too.

Optimising for this new way of searching is known as GEO. Generative Engine optimistation.

And therefore we have to start asking ourselves.. are our commerce platforms or products ready for this?... and what are the implications if not?

Kevlin Henney Thought Provoker

Kevlin is an independent consultant, trainer, speaker and writer. His development interests and work with companies covers programming, practice and people. He is a contributor to the Modern Software Engineering YouTube channel. Kevlin is also co-author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know and former columnist for a number of magazines and sites.

Much Ado About Nothing

Ever since zero became something for nothing, you'd think we'd solved nothing. Whether we're talking NaN, string.Empty, nullables or database nulls, it turns out that nothing is more surprising than nothing. There some things to learn in this talk about nothing.

Mike Masey Full Stack Developer, Huskey Ltd

Mike is an enthusiastic, smiley full-stack developer with over 10 years’ experience building award-winning websites. He’s an active contributor to the Umbraco community, helping organise meetups, co-organising UMBRAAD, and founding the community-led Umbraco Accessibility Guild. He is also a member of the W3C Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Community Group. His work spans development, accessibility consultancy, and facilitation, and has been recognised with seven Umbraco MVP awards.

Can AI Build an Accessible Tool If You Only Write the Spec?

I ran an experiment to see how far I could get building an accessible web tool by writing specifications instead of code. Using Claude Code and Speckl (Thanks Matt Brailsford!), I created a spec and task list for a brand colour contrast checker, then iterated while the AI generated the implementation.

In this lightning talk, I’ll share what worked surprisingly well (accessibility-focused specs, automated testing, WCAG contrast calculations), where the approach struggled (UX polish, visual judgement, progressive enhancement), and what I learned about using AI responsibly when accessibility and quality actually matter.

Richard Jackson Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson Platform Engineer, Rocket Science Group

Rich is a musician and software developer based in Cardiff, UK.

Across The Cloudiverse

Compare, contrast and critique the approaches and philosophies of different cloud service providers (CSPs) - such as Azure, AWS, GCP and Hetzner - and how Umbraco solutions be architected in each.

Having recently moved from an "Azure-only" mindset to a more diverse appreciation of different CSP offerings, Richard F. Jackson is looking to share what possible benefits could be found from considering other options. There's also some core philosophical differences between the CSPs and their resource management strategies that have been illuminating to discover, and he would love to share them with you!

Niels Lyngsø Technical Product Manager, Umbraco

A Product Designer who prioritizes the editorial experience while empowering Developers to structure projects around their specific use cases.

With a background in Digital Design and Front-end Development, Niels draws on his experience to create intuitive interfaces that balance flexibility with just the right amount of technical complexity.

What’s Next in the Backoffice

Now that the Backoffice transformation is complete, the platform is ready for innovation. The next phase focuses on collaboration. Introducing features that support teamwork, shared content blocks, content diff views, and simultaneous editing.

In this session, we’ll explore what’s coming next. This session will bring live demos of work in progress and some as conceptual walkthroughs.

This is your chance to get an exclusive look at what's to come.

Joe Glombek Senior .NET Developer, Umbraco MVP, Bump Digital

Joe is a senior .NET developer who's passionate about open technologies and tech community. He’s an Umbraco Certified Master and MVP who's been working with .NET, Umbraco and Azure in various digital agencies for the past decade.

Talk to him about open web technologies, accessibility, community-building and Umbraco!

Developers, Assemble! Community is Your Team’s Superpower

What happens when your team spends work time eating pizza and hanging out with other techies? Surprisingly, they don’t just come back with stickers. They come back with ideas, solutions to problems, and a renewed enthusiasm for the work in front of them.

The Umbraco community is one of the most active in the tech world, with in-person and virtual meetups across the globe hosting experts who love sharing their knowledge. For businesses, these events are an incredibly cost‑effective way to keep teams engaged and learning. While conferences or formal training can swallow days of time and thousands in cash, a local meetup costs little more than a couple of hours and a bus fare — yet often delivers insights that save development time, reduce risk, keep technical debt in check and help teams adopt new technologies sooner while avoiding outdated approaches and reinventing the wheel.

In this lightning talk, Joe shares what he’s learned as an organiser of the Bristol Umbraco Meetup — one of the longest‑running and best‑attended groups in the community.

If you want a stronger tech team and bulletproof projects, helping them engage with the community might just be the highest-value superpower you can give them.

Matt Sutherland Head of Technology, true digital

Matt is an Umbraco MVP and part of the Umbraco back-office community team and a keen advocate for all things Umbraco. He brings over 15 years of agency experience to try and distil client needs into actionable, technical problem solving,

A Website, an Email, and an AI Summary walk into a Bar…

"A Website, an Email, and an AI Summary walk into a Bar... and none of them can agree on the price of a pint"

Ok, so in a world where OpenAI processes around 2.5 billion prompts per day and around a 5th of those are product related requests. It is clear that the way people are searching online is changing, and the source of their information is changing too.

Optimising for this new way of searching is known as GEO. Generative Engine optimistation.

And therefore we have to start asking ourselves.. are our commerce platforms or products ready for this?... and what are the implications if not?

In this talk we will highlight:

  • How you can get your platforms ready for GEO

  • How you can align all of your product data sources

  • How we can use tools like Struct and utilise AI successfully to counteract hallucinations and unreliable product data being returned

Busra Sengul Busra Sengul

Busra Sengul Developer, true digital

Busra will be joining Spark 2026 as an MC!

Busra is a backend developer at true digital in Bristol. Working with Umbraco since 2018. MVPx5, Core Collaborators and Documentation team member at Umbraco! Turkish Umbraco User Group meetup organizer on the side and also a latin dancer and a big reader!

Tim Payne Tim Payne

Tim Payne Freelance Web Developer, Attack Monkey

Tim will be joining Spark 2026 as an MC!

Tim is an Umbraco MVP, and is a freelance Umbraco specialist who’s been working with the platform since the heady days of V4. He’s also possibly one of the only Umbraco developers to hold a (joint) Guinness World Record.

Lotte Pitcher Developer Advocate, Umbraco

Lotte will be presenting the Umbraco Spark 2026 Package Awards.

Lotte has been building websites with Microsoft technologies for longer than she cares to remember, starting with classic ASP and working through every version of .NET since. She previously ran a web development agency in London and is now part of the Developer Relations team at Umbraco, where she helps maintain a successful open-source project while engaging with its dedicated global community.

As a Microsoft MVP and a long-time open-source contributor, Lotte organises meetups, hackathons and conferences, speaks at events and releases software. She is a passionate advocate for active participation in tech communities and aims to create inclusive, safe and welcoming spaces - both in-person and virtual - where everyone can learn, collaborate and thrive.

Sophie Neale Sophie Neale

Sophie Neale Test Lead, Gibe Digital

Sophie will be presenting the Umbraco Spark 2026 Package Awards.

Sophie's role as Senior QA Engineer is hugely important to the team, not only does she help us catch out any glitches on projects but she takes time to make suggestions for improvements. With her experience she is able to ensure our work is at a consistently high standard in terms of functionality, user experience and design.

In addition to her role within our team, Sophie has been an active member of the Umbraco Community for the past four years, contributing to the Documentation, Backoffice, and currently the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) teams. Her contributions have earned her the Umbraco MVP award four times.

Outside of work, Sophie enjoys exploring the vibrant and ever-evolving cultural scene in Bristol, with a particular passion for the city's food offerings. She's a keen runner to help balance the bougie lifestyle!