As we begin 2026 with Volume 4, Issue 1 of Editor’s Pick, our weekly newsletter, we return with a fresh dispatch of Drupal news, community highlights, and contributor updates.

With each edition, we continue to focus on amplifying contributions and sharing developments that shape the Drupal ecosystem. This year also presents an opportunity to reflect, not only on where Drupal is today, but also on how far it has come.

Drupal turns 25 this month. The official anniversary, on January 15, marks a quarter-century since the initial release of Drupal 1.0. Over that time, the project has grown through community-led development and steady innovation. Whether you’ve contributed code, organised events, maintained modules, or built with Drupal, this anniversary belongs to you, too.

To mark the occasion, the global community is coordinating celebrations throughout the week of January 8 to 15. These will include online events, local meetups, and stories shared by users and contributors alike. The format is intentionally flexible, allowing participation across time zones and regions. Community members in Vienna and Ottawa, among others, are already preparing localised gatherings.

We encourage you to take part in whatever way works for you — sharing a post, attending a meetup, or simply reflecting on your time with Drupal. For those looking to stay updated or contribute ideas, the #celebratedrupal channel on Drupal Slack is the central hub. We'll continue to follow and report on these efforts as the week unfolds.

DISCOVER DRUPALDISCOVER DRUPAL

• See Your Year in Drupal with QED42's 'Drupal Year in Review 2025'
• Capturing the Colors of Drupal: A Visual Journey Through DriesNotes
• Andrii Podanenko Champions Local Fine-Tuning of Language Models for Privacy and Precision
• API Insight Lab Debuts as Native Load Testing Suite for Drupal Developers

FREE SOFTWARE

• Symfony AI v0.1.0 Launches with 70+ Packages, Marking Major Milestone in PHP AI Integration

EVENT

• Drupal Dev Days Athens 2026 Extends Early Bird Tickets to February 1
• Tickets Available for Drupal4Gov EU Conference 2026 in Brussels
• OpenCampus to Showcase How AI and Drupal Replace Legacy SIS Workflows in Higher Ed
• DrupalCamp Grenoble 2026 to Host Bilingual Sessions and Contribution Sprints in the French Alps
• Drupal Turns 25: Vienna to Host Local Celebration on January 15
• DrupalCamp England 2026 Opens Call for Speakers for Salford Event

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• File Analyzer Extension Simplifies File Cleanup for CiviCRM Administrators

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you.

Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor
The DropTimes

2025: A Year In Review john Sun, 01/04/2026 - 14:42

As I sit here in 2026 getting ready to head back to work tomorrow (Monday), I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the year that was 2025. It was a busy year—and one that somehow went by incredibly fast. Between the increasing use of AI and the rapid innovation happening across the Drupal ecosystem, there was a lot to experience, contribute to, and learn from. Looking back, 2025 felt like a year when many long-term ideas became real, usable tools for the community.

A common request I see when theming Search API forms is to swap out the normal submit element with a magnifying glass icon. Performing this action isn't difficult, but it does require adding a couple of operations to add a suggestion so a custom template can be used.

When I set up a view to perform a search against a Search API index I normally create an exposed filter for the text content. Views shows this as a block that can be embedded into the site. The block, however, comes with a input element to act as the search button, and it isn't possible to inject SVG icons into input elements.

By changing the input element to a button we can then inject a small SVG of a magnifying glass or similar to act as the search button.

Swapping out this input element takes a couple of steps, and I although I have done this technique a few times I still need to dig into old code to figure out how I did it. So, I thought I would document it so I didn't have to go looking for the solution again.

In this article I will look at how we can use a combination of form alters and suggestion hooks to change the Search API form submit input to a button so that an SVG can be embedded inside.

Altering The Search Form

The first step (and perhaps the trickiest) is to alter the search form to add a couple of attributes to the search submit element.

If we add a theme suggestion alter hook for the input element, the element itself has no knowledge of the context that surrounds it. This makes it tricky to know that we are altering the correct element or even to inject a suggestion that would be unique for the search form.

The form alter hook, therefore, is used to inject an attribute into the form element so that we can read this in the suggestions hook. This gives is a bit of data we can identify and use in the suggestions hook.

Read more