WPBakery first company retreat – Bali, 2026

During last week of September, we gathered the WPBakery team in one place for a week of shared moments, first-time meetings for many of us, some fresh air and adventures and, overall, making good and long-lasting memories.

As this was our first company retreat, we gave a lot of thought to where we wanted it to happen. We wanted a place where we could step away from our usual routines, reconnect, bond meaningfully and hopefully make this first retreat mean a little more than simply spending a week together. The choice to have our first company retreat in Ubud, Bali, was no accident.

How many of you can say you visit your clients and customers? ’Cause we do.

Metland Venya Ubud, the resort that hosted our team of 22 people – employees and their loved ones (yes, some of us took +1, or, in my case, +3!) – is one of our clients. Their website is built with WPBakery Page Builder, so it felt only natural to come and pay them a visit, enjoy their property and experience firsthand a business that uses the product we spend our days building, improving, supporting and talking about. There is something quite nice and special about that exchange. As they use WPBakery to present their business to the world, this time we got to cross that screen and actually become their guests.

The reality of working remotely

But Bali was only the setting. The real reason for bringing everyone together was the team itself and this is why. WPBakery is a remote company, which means we work closely every day while living in different countries and parts of the world, following different routines and, in some cases, having spent years working together without ever meeting face to face. That changed in Bali.

For Rohan, that alone was the highlight:

“The highlight for me was meeting everyone in person after years of meeting via Zoom.”

Rajarshi said much the same:

“The highlight of this trip has been the people: getting to meet in person the people I’ve spent so much time with online, and also experiencing how hospitable the people of Bali have been.”

And that is probably the biggest value of getting a remote team together in one place – getting to know more of the person behind the work.

During our week in Ubud, we had conversations that never happen on a scheduled call. We sat together long after dinner was over; we talked about work, but also about everything else. We all learned who wants to explore, who wants another coffee, who is always ready for a joke, who somehow still has energy at the end of a very long day.

Gobinda summed up that part perfectly:

“My highlight was meeting the team in person, especially our late-night chats after dinner about life, work and funny moments. Those conversations made the trip special for me.”

More than just a company

And then there were the +1s. We wanted this retreat to include more than just the people whose names appear in Slack every day. Partners and families are a big part of the lives behind a remote team, and having them there with us made the experience more personal and much less like a traditional company event. Michael’s highlight was exactly that:

“What made Bali stand out was who was there. Nearly the entire team joined, along with their +1s, and for a few days we were not a company but a group of friends on holiday. Getting to know the families behind our colleagues is what I’ll remember most.”

That may actually be one of the things we will value most once everyone is back home. Because now the people we work with are connected to more than a profile picture, a role, a project, or a meeting. There are shared meals, conversations, places, stories and people around them too. And Bali gave us quite a few stories.

For Oleg, it was his first time in Asia, something he described as “discovering a parallel world.”

For Edgars, it was the food, the friendliness of the local people and, naturally, the traffic:

“After coming back home and being out on the streets, I had the feeling that Riga was completely empty.”

Cagdas will remember riding bikes around the city with colleagues. Dmytro picked Gembleng Waterfall, with its climb, natural pools and lunch overlooking the landscape.

And Bogdan apparently added another discipline to our company retreat:

“Setting a new personal best in airport sprinting. 15 minutes to clear Gate A28 to D9 in Istanbul Airport. I didn’t miss the flight, but I definitely won’t miss that cardio session.”

For me, though, one particular day probably says more about this retreat than the perfectly planned parts ever could. Our group trip to Nusa Penida started with the very reasonable idea of seeing the beach and some of the island’s famous sights. It ended up becoming roughly 12 hours of traveling around the island. By the end of it, we were tired, drained and hurting in places we did not know could hurt from sitting in a car for that long. Objectively? Not exactly the perfect excursion. And yet we had such a good time. We joked, talked, laughed at the situation and somehow managed to turn a fairly ridiculous day into one of those memories that gets better every time you retell it. And I think that says quite a lot.

WPBakery company retreat takeaways

You can plan a retreat, choose the destination, organize activities and build an itinerary, but you cannot really plan the part where people click – if anything, that happens somewhere in between. Over dinner. On a motorcycle. In a car that has been stuck on the road for far too long. While climbing toward a waterfall. During a late-night conversation. Or while somebody is sprinting through Istanbul Airport trying not to miss a connection.

We went to Bali because we wanted the WPBakery team to finally spend proper time together. We came back knowing each other better, having met the people behind many of our colleagues and with enough shared stories to keep conversations going long after the tan disappears.

For a company that spends most of the year working together from different parts of the world, this makes the occasional week in the same place very much worth it.

And for our first one, visiting a client on the other side of the world was a pretty good place to start.

What’s next for us?

All this to say – WPBakery is having more things in the Q4, starting with our upcoming 9.1 release. Stay tuned for the new and improved things we planned for you, our users and customers. As we listened, learned from 9.0 and took into account things you pointed out so the product that we all love can be even better and easier to use. As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the official Community and help us improving the WPBakery Page Builder through and through.