WordCamp Belgrade 2026: Key takeaways for the WordPress community

WordCamp Belgrade 2026 brought the WordPress community back to Dom omladine for two days of talks, workshops, panels, hallway conversations and very real reminders of where WordPress stands today. There were 202 tickets sold, people came from more than 10 countries and we learned that 26% of attendees were first time comers to any WordCamp. Here are some of the main takeaways we took from it.

For WPBakery, this was not just another event to attend. Two of our team members, Bogdan Radusinović and myself, were also part of the organizing team, which made the experience even more direct: we were not only listening from the audience, but also helping shape the space where these conversations happened.

Here are some of the main takeaways we took from it.

AI is useful, but only when people still know what they are doing

Whether you’re using it in development, design or content creation – AI is and should be always a tool, instead of a replacement. From Nikola Svitlica to Ivelina Dimova, Marcel Schmitz and panel that I was moderating on the day one, the common takeaway is pretty unanimous:

AI only becomes useful when people bring enough skill, context and judgment to guide it.

As AI is no more this “nice to have” thing rather than a go-to everyday tool, something that now gives everyone a skill that gets them to generate code, layouts, copy, or ideas faster than before, the real advantage moves to something different. It’s called the judgment: knowing what to keep, what to change, what to question and what should never be shipped. Something that still needs to be learned and adopted globally.

We would add one more note to this: AI is useful only when the human using it knows what good looks like.

Better communication beats more communication

One of the strongest messages from the event came through Lena Gregorčič’s talk: we do not need to communicate more. We need to communicate better.

And this takeaway applies all across the industry: from product teams and plugin businesses, agencies and freelancers, as well as everyone else building for WordPress users. More emails, more posts, more updates and more documentation will not help if the message is unclear. We all need to explain what really matters and why, before telling users what they should do next.

In WPBakery, we take this very close to our product heart, as every release (like the 9.0 for instance), feature, update, tutorial and support article we create is done by thinking it should make the user’s job easier, not simply add another piece of content to the pile.

So, think of content creation not as a way to fill channels but a tool that reduces confusion and, as such, helps users reach their goals, while helping you do the same.

If it can’t look it up, it will make it up

AI can help with code, examples, debugging and documentation, but it needs context. Without the project logic, dependencies, constraints and actual source of truth, it will still give an answer which may sound confident enough to pass as useful, while being completely wrong for the product in front of you.

That makes documentation, internal decisions, naming, structure and product logic much more important than they look from the outside. If the context is messy, missing or unclear, the output will be messy too – whether it comes from a person, an AI tool or both.

This is where development gets less isolated. Code is still code, but the work around it matters more: how decisions are documented, how changes are explained, how teams test things, how support understands what changed and how users experience the final result.

Career paths are rarely linear – and that is a good thing

The second panel that I moderated, From Employee to Entrepreneur, brought together Alexander Gilmanov, Atanas Yonkov and Remkus de Vries for a conversation about what actually happens between having a job and building something of your own and not in a romanticizing entrepreneurship kind of way. They talked about their personal experiences, limitations, strategies and takeaways shared among friends. We discussed the responsibility, timing, mistakes, money, independence, pressure and the decisions people rarely see from the outside.

Looking forward for you to see it once it goes up on WordPress.tv, stay tuned for that and, in the meantime, feel free to reach out to them via LinkedIn or Twitter.

What we are taking forward

From WordCamp Belgrade 2026, we are taking back a few clear reminders:

• Build things that solve real problems.
• Explain them better.
• Use AI where it helps, not where it weakens judgment.
• Treat documentation, education, and support as part of the product.
• Listen to the community before assuming you know what users need.
• Keep showing up.

A big thank you to the organizers, speakers, volunteers, sponsors and everyone who joined WordCamp Belgrade 2026.

We left with notes, ideas, interviews and conversations, as well as a stronger reminder of why the WordPress community still matters.

And yes – we need to do this more often. In the meantime, check out the event via #WCBGD.