The Woo team in Zagreb: Platform updates, roadmap, and what’s next

At the last meetup, we examined WooCommerce under pressure. Security failures, AI agents behaving badly, and real examples of how stores get compromised.

This time, we’re flipping the angle!

The Winter 2026 Zagreb WooCommerce Meetup focuses on how the platform is being built and steered today. We’re hosting speakers from Automattic and the WooCommerce team to walk through recent platform updates, what’s currently being prioritized, and what’s coming next.

You’ll hear what has shipped, what’s changing in key areas like checkout and blocks, and how upcoming work is likely to affect developers and merchants building on Woo. You’ll also get roadmap context straight from the people shaping it.

Seeing these folks in person in Croatia doesn’t happen often! If you build, maintain, or sell on WooCommerce, this meetup should make your next set of technical decisions easier.

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Lecture 01 - What’s new in Woo: latest updates & what’s coming next

WooCommerce has been moving fast. Checkout extensibility, shipping and fulfillment changes, block-first experiences, the Interactivity API, and a growing layer of AI features are no longer “experimental” but becoming the default.

In this talk, Brian and Shani will walk through the most important recent changes in WooCommerce and what’s coming next. Expect concrete examples, platform context, and guidance on how these changes affect real-world Woo builds.

Brian Coords is a developer advocate at WooCommerce and a long-time WordPress developer, writer, and instructor. He hosts a WordPress podcast at Webmasters_fm and writes for WP Tavern, MasterWP, The WP Minute, and his own technology blog.

Shani Banerjee is a developer advocate at WooCommerce, where she hosts monthly developer office hours and writes about platform updates and extensibility on the WooCommerce developer blog. Her work is shaped by a strong community-first background spanning support, software engineering, and education.

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Lecture 02 - The state of WooCommerce: where we are & where we’re going

In this session, Brent will zoom out and talk about how WooCommerce is positioning itself today: what’s driving the roadmap, how Woo thinks about high-growth merchants, and how the platform is evolving to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded eCommerce landscape.

This is the “why” behind the updates which will help you understand the bigger picture: the product, market, and ecosystem context that rarely gets discussed outside closed rooms.

Brent MacKinnon is director of product marketing and developer advocacy at WooCommerce (Automattic). He leads go-to-market strategy, developer relations, and analyst engagement, and focuses on making complex platform decisions understandable to builders and merchants alike. He’s based in Halifax, Canada.

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AGENDA

18:00 - Meet & greet
18:05 - Talk: What’s new in Woo: latest updates & what’s coming next
18:40 - Q&A
19:00 - Talk: The state of WooCommerce: where we are & where we’re going
19:35 - Q&A
After - Pizza & Beer 🍕🍺