Drupal.org Updates Event Categories to Improve Clarity and Usability

Drupal.org has updated its event category labels to improve clarity, reduce redundancy, and accommodate a broader range of community events. The changes, implemented in April 2025, affect the Community Events submission interface and display, making it easier for users to classify events meaningfully.

The update originated from an issue reported by Nico Grienauer (acolono GmbH, Drupal Austria), who proposed renaming and reorganizing the existing categories to make them less Drupal-specific and more widely applicable. The issue was tracked under #3467917: Rethink the Event Categories.

After community discussion, several category labels were changed:

• “Local meetup” was renamed to “Meetup/interest group”
• “DrupalFest” to “Ceremony/awards”
• “DrupalCamp” to “Camp”
• “Drupal initiative meeting” to “Initiative meeting”

The updated category list now appears in the following order:

• Camp  
• Ceremony/awards  
• Contribution  
• DrupalCon  
• Initiative meeting  
• Meetup/interest group  
• Training  
• External technology event

The changes reflect input from several Drupal community members. Heather Wozniak (OpenScholar) supported avoiding vague or nondescriptive options, such as “Other,” noting it lacked clarity and added unnecessary complexity to the user interface. Nick Wilde (Factorial GmbH) questioned the need for both “Contribution” and “Initiative meeting” as separate categories, raising concerns about overlap. Esmeralda Tijhoff (DICTU, drupalnl) suggested adding formats like “Business Meetup” and “Tech Meetup” to better reflect the diversity of event types.

The technical updates were carried out by Neil Drumm (Drupal Association), who confirmed deployment of the new labels and updates to the events sidebar. The revision involved renaming and reordering only—no categories were removed, so existing event data remains intact.

Event aggregators, including The DropTimes, may need to revise how event types are mapped within their platforms. Community member Eric Wheeler raised this consideration during the discussion. Coordination is ongoing to ensure consistency across Drupal-related listings.

No structural changes to the event system were made. Further updates may be considered as part of the future migration to the Drupal 10 platform.

References:  
Drupal.org. (2025, April 3). Issue #3467917: Rethink the Event Categories. 
Drupal.org. (2025). Community Events. 
Slack. (2024). Event Organizers Open Meeting.