Content: Blog

From a completely refreshed rich-text editing experience to significant work on the upcoming django CMS 5.1 release, here's a look at what landed over the last three months.

📝 Rich Text Editing Gets a Major Upgrade

One of the biggest areas of investment this quarter has been content editing.

Tiptap 3 Becomes the Default Future

The djangocms-text package received a substantial update with support for Tiptap 3, bringing a faster and more flexible editing experience. The release also marks the end of support for both Quilland TinyMCE, allowing the project to focus on a more modern and extensible editor architecture. The result is a streamlined toolbar, improved performance, and a cleaner extension model for custom editor functionality.

CKEditor 5 Reaches Feature Parity

A major milestone was reached with the introduction of enhanced support for CKEditor 5 through the new djangocms-text-ckeditor5 package. Most notably, CKEditor 5 now supports text-enabled django CMS plugins, removing one of the last major blockers for teams wanting to adopt the editor. This makes CKEditor 5 a fully viable, production-ready alternative for projects that prefer a traditional WYSIWYG experience.

This is particularly significant because, until recently, plugin support inside CKEditor 5 was not yet available. The gap has now been closed.

🔒 Security and Stability Improvements in Core

The core CMS received a series of important maintenance and security updates.

Security Fixes

Two XSS vulnerabilities were addressed, covering tooltip rendering and validator messages. Additional work tightened permissions around inline editing, closing edge cases where editing controls could become accessible under unintended circumstances.

Improved Editing Reliability

Editors working on large sites should notice fewer issues with concurrent page modifications. The team continued refining page-tree locking behavior and reducing edit-time deadlocks, improving overall stability for content teams managing complex site structures.

Maintenance Releases

These improvements were delivered through a series of maintenance releases, including:

• django CMS 4.1.10
• django CMS 4.1.11
• django CMS 5.0.7

The releases continue the project's focus on reliability, permissions, migration robustness, and compatibility maintenance.

🧩 Components, Slots, and a New Website Architecture

Another major theme this quarter has been the evolution of reusable components.

djangocms-frontend 2.4.0

The latest release of djangocms-frontend introduces several highly requested capabilities:

• Component slots
• Custom default configurations
• Enhanced link target handling

These features make it easier to build reusable, composable content structures while still giving editors flexibility where needed.

Slot Support Comes to Core

To support these patterns, django CMS core gained a dedicated UI for plugins that act as slots. This provides a more intuitive editing experience when assembling component-based layouts and opens the door for more sophisticated page-building workflows.

Powering the New django-cms.org

These capabilities are already being put to work. The ongoing rebuild of the official django-cms.org website has generated roughly 60 pull requests and serves as a real-world proving ground for the new component architecture.

The website remains one of the project's most active areas of development and continues to drive improvements across the ecosystem.

⚡ Ecosystem Highlights

The broader ecosystem also saw significant progress.

Form Builder 0.5

djangocms-form-builder gained:

• Altcha CAPTCHA support, providing a privacy-friendly alternative to traditional CAPTCHA solutions
• Form caching, improving performance for high-traffic forms

REST API Improvements

djangocms-rest advanced from version 1.1 to 1.2, adding:

• Compatibility with django CMS 5.1
• A new health-check endpoint for operational monitoring and deployments

Versioning Enhancements

djangocms-versioning received safeguards preventing accidental deletion of public versions while also preparing for upcoming Django releases.

Faster SVG Security

djangocms-filer now enables SVG sanitization in a more efficient manner, helping maintain security without introducing unnecessary overhead.

Python 3.14 Support

djangocms-alias added support for Python 3.14, continuing the ecosystem-wide effort to stay ahead of upcoming platform releases.

🔮 Looking Ahead

A significant portion of recent work has focused on future compatibility.

Across the ecosystem, maintainers have been preparing packages for:

• Django 5.2
• Django 6.1
• Python 3.14

This proactive approach helps ensure that django CMS remains a strong option for organizations looking to stay current with the Django ecosystem.

The upcoming django CMS 5.1 release is now clearly in sight. The recently published 5.1 alpha introduced a refreshed user interface, additional configuration flexibility, and improved plugin management capabilities, providing a preview of what's coming next.

Beyond 5.1, the community is also expecting updates from the django CMS AI initiative in the coming weeks, making the second half of 2026 an exciting period for the project.

💙 Thank You

None of this happens without the contributors, maintainers, reviewers, testers, documentation writers, and users who continue to invest time into the django CMS ecosystem.

429 merged pull requests in three months is an impressive achievement and a testament to the momentum the project has built.

Thank you to everyone who contributed. We're looking forward to seeing what ships next.