WordCamp US 2026 Recap

WordCamp US ran from 16 to 19 August at the Phoenix Convention Center: Contributor Day, Showcase Day and two days of talks, with more than 50 sessions on the schedule. Arizona in August is its own kind of commitment though. And some of our team saw temperatures as high as 47 degrees Celsius. Thankfully, the golf carts shuttling people between venues saved our shoes from melting into the concrete. 

Nothing beats meeting in person

Jade, Our Head of Partnerships, spent most of the week in partner meetings, and several key relationships moved forward properly over those few days. 

“You can accomplish a lot over video calls, but having that in-person time to build trust and talk through things properly makes a real difference.”

Orestis had been working with some of the people he met in Phoenix for more than a year, and this was the first time they had been in the same room. Jemma met her client in person for the first time, and together with Orestis and Dan Pizzolato from Standex, they presented a keynote about AI translations, and what common pitfalls can show up when you leave it all to the machines. 

Nadine, our new sales account executive, found that Syde needed no introduction to most people she spoke with, and got recognised more than once for the green t-shirt.

One of our senior full stack developers, Danny, and Shani Banerjee, Developer Advocate at WooCommerce, took the AI track on the 18th of August with their keynote “From Crawlers to Customers: WordPress and the Rise of AI Buyers”. They worked through three questions a store owner can act on now: can an AI agent find your products, can it complete a purchase, and can you trust the order when it arrives. You can watch their full keynote here.

Robert led the Multisite table on Contributor Day, which the community ran as a hackathon this year. Instead of the usual onboarding focus, the day pushed for shipped work. Anyone could pitch, first-time attendees included, and the ideas turned into PRs, plugins and working solutions by the afternoon. Robert pitched improvements to the Multisite documentation, because the source of truth needs to stay current. This type of developer involvement was a lot of fun, and we hope it’s something that continues in future WordCamps.

A few other standout keynotes

Bo English-Wiczling’s keynote covered how the developer landscape is changing under AI and which skills hold their value. It stayed specific to what this community builds day to day, which is rarer than it should be on an AI track.

Brian Coords, on the Honing Your Skills track, went deep on how content and design editing in WordPress has evolved. He previewed block-related WP-CLI functionality and a plugin for keeping control over agents editing your content. That plugin is the part Danny keeps thinking about, since agents editing production content is a problem most agencies will have before they have a policy for it.

Worth the heat

Four days, multiple insightful, one Contributor Day table and a calendar full of partner meetings. The heat might have affected overall attendance levels, but it was still an incredible event throughout. The showcase floor was busy and the organisers went out of their way to make the event work for people. 

We left WordCamp US with a much better feel for WooCommerce and where it sits on the Automattic side of the ecosystem. We also came home with a  list of Multisite documentation fixes from Robert’s hackathon pitch. Brian Coords’ agent-control plugin is on Danny’s list of cool new things in WordPress to try. And it’s always a fun time meeting with our partners in person and spending time with the people we collaborate with so often. 

Add the local food, the golf carts and the Sake Haus table to that, and it was worth dealing with the 47 degrees. 

Thank you to all the event organizers and sponsors who made this year’s WordCamp US possible. And thank you to everyone who came out to attend. 

You can view all the talks and keynotes on the WordCamp US YouTube playlist here. 

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