I’ve been thinking about where WordPress is heading. WordCamp Europe is the closest thing the community has to an annual census, so I pulled four years of data: attendees, talk topics, program size. Here’s what the math says, and what it doesn’t.
The attendance trajectory is real
WordCamp Europe peaked in Berlin 2019 at roughly 3,247 attendees. Post-COVID, Porto 2022 came back smaller at 2,304. Athens 2023 rebounded to about 3,000. Then the decline started.
- 2024 Torino: ~2,500
- 2025 Basel: 1,723
- 2026 Kraków: 1,643 registered with 8 days to go, projecting 1,900-2,050 final
Roughly 35% below the Athens 2023 peak. Two consecutive years of meaningful contraction. WCEU organisers projected 3,500-4,500 for Basel and got under 2,000.
One number, in one room, in one year. It’s a leading indicator, not a verdict. But it’s a sharp signal.
The talks are pivoting fast
The program tells a clearer story than attendance because it reflects what organisers think attendees want to hear.
AI talks went from 1 (Torino 2024) to 2 (Basel 2025) to 8 (Kraków 2026). From 2% of the program to 16%. AI is no longer a side topic at the WordPress flagship event.
Security talks doubled from 2 in Basel to 4 in Kraków, the highest share of the program in four years of data. Four sessions on platform hardening, including a search-endpoint DDoS vector, headless API security, and a session called “Testing the promise: does secure hosting deliver?”. The program committee is treating WordPress security as an industry concern, not a developer footnote.
Business and agency talks have nearly disappeared. From nine such sessions in Athens to two in Kraków. WordPress as a business platform is underrepresented this year.
The program itself is contracting too. 77 talks in Athens, 60 in Torino, 51 in Basel, 49 in Kraków. About 36% fewer sessions than the 2023 peak.
What the cohort data can and cannot tell us
I also pulled WordPress.org join dates for every attendee with a public profile. About 47% of Kraków attendees have linked one. Of those, 15.5% created their account in 2025 or 2026, likely for the conference itself.
I tried to use this to argue that long-time WordPress contributors are dropping out faster than the average attendee. That comparison doesn’t quite work. Each WCEU pulls a different geographic crowd. Athens 2023 favoured Mediterranean residents. Kraków 2026 favours Polish and Eastern European devs. Comparing snapshots tells you about who flew where, not whether the WordPress community is contracting as a whole.
What I can say honestly: I’ve attended several WCEUs. The faces I used to expect to see in the halls are showing up less. That’s pattern recognition, not regression analysis. But four years of declining attendance plus a program pivoting hard to AI and security plus my own observation all line up.
One geographic signal does hold across the years: the Anglo share of attendees (UK, US, Australia, Canada, Ireland) has thinned every year, from 6.3% in Athens to 4.2% in Kraków. Asian attendance has been near zero throughout, never crossing 0.5%. The “Europe” in WordCamp Europe is more accurate than ever.
Gender, best-guessed from first names, has been remarkably steady. Roughly 73-75% male, 25-27% female across all four events. Torino 2024 was the most balanced at 71:29; the rest within a few points. No trend.
What I think this means
WordPress has been the dominant CMS for fifteen years. It still powers about 43% of the web. The platform isn’t dying. But the energy is moving.
The product economy around WordPress is under pressure. I hear from plugin shop founders that sales have dropped significantly in 2025 versus 2024. The conference reflects this: fewer business talks, fewer founders prowling the sponsor floor, fewer of the conversations that used to lead to deals.
The platform itself is in a strange phase. Gutenberg shipped years ago and adoption is steady but unspectacular. Full Site Editing is real but hasn’t unlocked the shift it promised. The Matt-versus-WP-Engine fight in 2024 burned trust. This month I helped resurface meta-trac #6511, a plugin-author request for the return of active install growth charts in the plugin directory, open since September 2022. 144 comments. No movement on the ticket itself. The clearest answer came not on the ticket but in a Slack reply: “sorry, but I can’t elaborate into the reasons.” That’s where developer relations sits right now.
The people I work with most closely now have one foot in WordPress and one foot somewhere else. AI agencies. Headless products. Independent SaaS. The second foot is gaining weight every quarter.
I see it in my own work too. At AgentVania, the AI services agency I run, my pipeline doesn’t come from WordPress channels anymore. The new bets are not WordPress-shaped.
If you’re a founder of a plugin or theme business and your read is different, I’d like to hear it.
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