Proposal: Next.js for Drupal BoF at DrupalCon Chicago (March 2026)

[thejimbirch]

Hi everyone 👋

I’m Jim Birch from Kanopi Studios. As many of you know, Kanopi recently acquired Chapter Three, the original creators and maintainers of the open source Next.js for Drupal project.

Over the last several months the project has been minimally maintained, and we’ve been grateful to see other community members step up as volunteer maintainers. With DrupalCon Chicago coming up in March, I’d like to propose a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session to discuss the future direction of the project and how we can set it up for long-term sustainability.

The details:

What’s Next for Next.js for Drupal?
Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 13:30 to 14:00 CDT
Salon B - BoF # 2
https://events.drupal.org/chicago2026/bof/whats-next-nextjs-drupal

Goals for the BoF

The goal is to align on:

• What we want this project to be over the next 12–24 months
• What versions we support
• How we sustain maintenance and prioritize features
• How contributors and organizations can participate effectively

Proposed discussion topics

1. Project sustainability / funding
   • Open the project to individual and business sponsorship
   • Explore using a platform like OpenCollective (or similar) for transparency and governance
2. Branch support and maintenance policy
   We should clearly define which branches are actively maintained vs archived, for example:
   • 1.0 (Drupal 9, Next.js version TBD)
   • 1.6 (Next.js 13, Drupal 10, Stable On-demand Revalidation)
   • 2.0 (Next.js 15, Drupal 11, App Router support)
3. Next.js version support
   • Define which Next.js versions are officially supported
   • Currently Next.js is on 16.x, which is not yet supported by our package
   • Next.js 15 reaches End of Life in Oct 2026 (and it’s Feb 2026 now), so we should plan accordingly
4. Feature roadmap
   • Review open feature requests
   • Identify high-impact additions and priorities

Call for participation

If you’re:
* Using Next.js for Drupal in production
* Maintaining the project
* Interested in sponsoring or contributing
* Interested in shaping the roadmap

…please comment here and let me know what you’d like included in the BoF agenda.

Thanks all. I am looking forward to collaborating on the next chapter of the project.

Jim

[cruno91]

Hi, we're using next-drupal in production for 17 sites (and counting). It's a part of our base architecture so we definitely want to see support continue for this. All of our sites are hosted in Lagoon.

We won't be at Drupal Con this year, but here are some things we are looking at around next-drupal:

• Better Next.js 16 support
• Next Tag exposure for CDN cache tags (integrated with revalidateTag())
• More documentation around "self-hosted" setups (not in Vercel or other serverless environments)
  • e.g. Redis for caching

[theodorosploumis]

We are using Drupal 10.x + next module on Production for 4 years now.
We recently moved to Next 16.x and app routes. We are also run on self-host with pm2.
Maybe I could give you some insights and our findings so far.