The first six months of 2026 saw WordPress’s five Global Partners — Jetpack, WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Bluehost, and Hostinger — show up in force at community events spanning Asia, Africa, and Europe. Booth conversations, sponsored sessions, and direct engagement with developers, freelancers, students, and agency owners played out across more than a dozen WordCamps and community events.
The year opened in January with WordCamp Nepal in Kathmandu, followed quickly by WordCamp Kolhapur and WordCamp Pune in India, where audiences of roughly 200 to 250 attendees — many of them students — packed a session on integrating WordPress with AI workflows. In February, Jetpack traveled to WordCamp Port Harcourt in Nigeria, where 256 attendees gathered for talks on inclusion and accessibility, and locally produced swag proved a standout hit.
Spring brought a concentrated run of European events, each with its own character. WordCamp Madrid drew 280 people, where WordPress.com ran a Wapuu treasure hunt with 97 participants. WordCamp Vienna attracted a developer-heavy crowd of 277, generating 8 booked agency meetings from the Jetpack booth alone. The first-ever WordPress Developers Day in Novi Sad introduced a new format with nearly 30 in-depth conversations on topics ranging from WooCommerce to client work.
| Event | Attendees | Notable highlight |
|---|---|---|
| WordCamp Madrid | 280 | Wapuu treasure hunt, 97 participants |
| WordCamp Nice | 247 | Focus on newsletters, security, Jetpack features |
| WordCamp Vienna | 277 | 8 agency meetings booked, strong WooCommerce interest |
| WordCamp Leipzig | 109 | AI and WordPress Studio dominated conversations |
| WordPress Developers Day (Novi Sad) | — | New event format, ~30 deep-dive conversations |
In May, WordCamp Kampala brought four Global Partners onto the sponsor roster simultaneously — Jetpack, WooCommerce, Bluehost, and WordPress.com — at an event themed “Tech for Social Good” that welcomed more than 200 attendees and reflected a fast-growing local scene in Uganda.
One of the more significant developments of the year sits outside the WordCamp format entirely. WordPress Campus Connect, a program designed to introduce university students to WordPress, passed 6,200 students as of early June, with 25 events completed in 2026, 45 events all-time, and 42 more already in planning or on the calendar. WordPress.com has provided hosting support throughout the program. The crossover between the two tracks shows up directly: an organizer first encountered at WordCamp Mukono went on to lead Campus Connect activity in Uganda, and a student who built her first WordPress site through Campus Connect later attended a WordCamp.
Bluehost and Hostinger joined as top-tier Global Sponsors in 2026, sitting alongside Jetpack and WordPress.com. That funding underwrites the broader WordCamp program, enabling organizers in cities like Kathmandu, Nice, and Kampala to stage events at this scale. AI integration was the single most consistent theme across booth conversations throughout the season, surfacing at events in India, Germany, Italy, and beyond — a signal of where WordPress users and builders are focusing their attention heading into the second half of the year.
