As President of Open Source Matters, I’m proud to mark Joomla’s 20th birthday and to recognize the countless people who have turned this project into a worldwide home for builders.
Born in 2005 from a belief in freedom, collaboration and community, Joomla has grown into a modern, dependable platform that serves organisations of every scale. Its driving force is, and has always been, you: the volunteers, contributors and advocates who share knowledge and ship code together.
Software and community have evolved side by side over these two decades. Today Joomla is quick, accessible, multilingual and secure, flexible enough for small sites yet sturdy enough for the most complex builds. Predictable release cycles and clear upgrade paths honor our pledge to pair innovation with stability so that the sites you create keep thriving.
Anniversaries are a moment to say thanks. Whether you donate time, expertise or funds; run a JUG or an event; maintain, mentor or translate; sponsor or partner you keep Joomla independent and resilient through transparent governance and respectful collaboration.
The road ahead is already mapped. We will keep Joomla fast, secure and accessible while reducing friction for site builders. Expect simpler upgrades, stronger backward-compatibility guarantees, sharper deprecation guidance, richer pre-update checks and better diagnostics. Accessibility will stay a baseline, not a checkbox, and we’ll continue to align with current web standards so that what you build today stands strong tomorrow.
Everyday authoring and development will keep improving too. Look for refined workflows, smarter media handling, a streamlined design system and helpful defaults for SEO, multilingual content and structured data. Developers can anticipate further API modernisation and targeted expansion of web services. We will also explore privacy-respecting, opt-in assistive tools such as suggestions for alt-text or editorial consistency with care and transparency.
Our greatest asset is this community, so we’ll deepen onboarding, documentation and mentorship; bolster JUGs and events; and forge partnerships that help agencies, freelancers and educators succeed. Sustainable funding models will protect our independence, clear governance will remain non-negotiable, and release schedules will stay predictable. However you contribute coding, testing, translating, teaching or simply introducing Joomla to someone new there is a seat for you. When you upgrade a site, write a tutorial, fix a bug or guide a newcomer, you carry Joomla’s spirit forward.
Thank you for the past twenty years. Here is to the future we will build together Joomla!
Maria Skampoura - OSM President.