2000 – Creation by Dries Buytaert
Drupal was created in 2000 by Belgian student Dries Buytaert as a message board while he was studying at the University of Antwerp. The name was intended to be “dorp” (Dutch for “village”) to reflect the importance of community, but Dries mistyped it as “drop.org” when registering the domain.
2001 – Open source release
On January 15, 2001, Dries released Drupal as an open source project, inviting others to contribute and shape the platform. The name evolved from “drop.org” to “Drupal” (from Dutch “druppel” = English “drop”).
2003 – Howard Dean campaign
Drupal gained significant prominence when Howard Dean’s 2004 U.S. presidential campaign used Drupal for their digital platform, featuring blogs, calendars, and forums. This demonstrated Drupal’s capability for large-scale community sites.
2007 – Acquia founded
Dries Buytaert partnered with Jay Batson to found Acquia, a company dedicated to supporting Drupal development and providing commercial products and services. This ensured sustainable funding for the project.
2008 – Drupal 6
Drupal 6 introduced improved usability, better performance, and enhanced content management features.
2011 – Drupal 7
Drupal 7 brought a new database abstraction layer, improved entity system, and better multilingual support.
2015 – Drupal 8
Drupal 8 was a major architectural shift, introducing Symfony components, Twig templating, configuration management system, and built-in web services (REST API).
2018 – Drupal 9
Drupal 9 focused on removing deprecated code from Drupal 8, making upgrades easier. It introduced modern JavaScript (ES6), Olivero theme, and Claro admin theme.
2021 – Drupal 10
Drupal 10 continued modernization with Symfony 6, Twig 2, and improved JavaScript tooling.
2024 – Drupal 11
Drupal 11 was released in July 2024, requiring PHP 8.3+ and introducing further modernization.
2026 – Current support status
| Fact | Details |
|---|---|
| Founder | Dries Buytaert |
| Created | 2000 (as message board) |
| Open Source Release | January 15, 2001 |
| Origin | drop.org (Dutch “dorp” = village, mistyped) |
| Acquia Founded | 2007 |
| License | GPLv2 or later |
| Current Version | Drupal 11 (July 2024) |
| Supported Version | Drupal 10 (until December 2026) |
| Market Share | ~1.3% of all websites |
| Repository | https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal |
| Official Site | https://www.drupal.org |