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The Future of Django | DjangoCon Africa 2025
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The Future of Django ✨

Thibaud Colas @ DjangoCon Africa 2025                                                               

Slides: thib.me / arusha-future /

Thank you Deborah

I only get to be here thanks to her support, looking after our family while I’m here with you all.

Django

Tagline: The web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.

Full-stack “batteries-included” MVT web framework: ORM, routing, template system, CLI, GIS, admin UI.

If you’ve not yet tried Django, have a go at the Django Girls tutorial!

My history with Django

Since 2015

Django Girls Wellington, New Zealand - 2016

Also a core team member for Wagtail since 2016.

A Content Management System (CMS) used by about 0.5% of websites worldwide (20-50k).

Come to Wagtail Space 2025 in October 🐦️🚀

The impact / purpose question for contributors

Ask yourself:

> Why am I contributing to those projects?
> What impact do I want to have?

Source: 2024 update of DjangoCon US 2023: Django’s accessibility track record

Source: December update of Wagtail accessibility statistics for GAAD 2024

Source: Dr Robert Rohde, IPCC data - via DjangoCon US 2024: Faster, leaner, greener: 10x lower website carbon emissions

The impact / purpose question for governance

Different questions we ask ourselves:

> Is the community healthy?

> What challenges and opportunities do we have?

> Are we heading in the right direction?

Website rankings

Source: Django metrics - market research

This tells us people use those tools, but not whether they actually like using them!

We have to find the right signals to answer those questions! (Net promoter score)

Members of the Django Software Foundation

400 individual members of the Django Software Foundation

You can become a member! By contributing to our Foundation’s mission (see you at the sprints tomorrow!)

Elections voter turnout

Elections

Voter turnout

2023 DSF Board

37.3%

5.x Steering Council

27.6%

2024 DSF Board

46.0%

6.x Steering Council

53.8%

2025 DSF Board

54.5% 🎉

Stack Overflow Developer Survey

Raw survey results:

Developers

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Worked with Django (%)

13.0%

12.7%

14.2%

15.3%

14.9%

12.3%

8.7%

12.6%

Want to work with Django (%)

17.0%

17.5%

19.5%

14.8%

13.4%

10.4%

7.4%

10.4%

Love (%)

58.3%

62.1%

55.3%

55.3%

53.1%

50.5%

50.7%

46.4%

Want to start using (%)

9.4%

9.6%

11.6%

6.3%

5.5%

4.2%

3.0%

Want to stop using (%)

41.7%

37.9%

44.7%

44.7%

46.9%

49.5%

49.3%

Adjusted for overall trend across all web frameworks, year-over-year change:

Developers

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Worked with Django (%)

-54.6%

-0.5%

1.9%

-12.8%

-20.7%

+1.7%

Want to work with Django (%)

-48.3%

4.2%

-14.1%

-22.4%

-15.6%

+0.6%

Love (%)

-68.1%

-9.2%

-20.1%

-34.0%

-2.9%

-15.6%

Want to start using (%)

-40.5%

9.3%

-18.7%

-30.8%

-8.6%

-0.1%

Want to stop using (%)

-72.6%

-8.2%

-9.0%

-18.7%

-10.0%

-10.9%

Source: StackOverflow Developer Survey, and my own Django metrics - market research

What it means:

Trends in the Python world

2023 Python Devs Survey - what web frameworks do you use?

Source: Python Developers Survey 2023

2023 Dev Ecosystem Survey – what web frameworks do you use?

> FastAPI has seen increasing usage over the past couple of years, rising from 14% in 2021 to 25% in 2023. This framework is renowned for its focus on high performance and developer ergonomics, leveraging modern Python features such as type hinting and built-in async support. It is specifically designed for constructing APIs with Python, offering a range of additional features and benefits to enhance development efficiency.

Source: JetBrains Dev Ecosystem Survey 2023 - Python

👉️ developer ergonomics 👉️ developer happiness

Django’s challenges existential threats: according to users

Opinions on the internet

> Don't get me wrong, I love Django, but I'm a little annoyed by the lack and the pace of evolution these last years.

> After watching this Rails keynote, I realised how Rails team is catching up with modern development

> […] Django is still being more and more adopted, due to the fact Python language usage is rising (thanks to data science and AI), while the framework no longer evolves.

– /u/bluewalt, October 2023, Opinion: this Rails Keynote should make Django devs jealous.

A reply:

> […] I do understand that there are no big corporations with tons of money backing Django and paying developers to work on it full time.

> […] since django is supposed to be "battery included", why do I need to use third-party packages to create a REST API in 2023? […] Why is something like django-debug-toolbar not part of the main framework?

More opinions

> Let's face it, it’s not very exciting to be a Django developer today.

>

> […] The purpose here is not to blame anyone for this because Django is a foundation, and without volunteers or funds, nothing can happen. I loved Django and still love it, but sometimes can feel a little bit frustrated by what Django could have evolved towards but did not, purposefully or not.

>

> […] Even if we can not blame Django Foundation for not having enough money or taskforce, can we blame them for their willingness to blindly stick with the original purpose of Django?

– October 2021, The decline of Django

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends in the wider industry

(Machine learning, natural language processing, data science… regular expressions?)

AI tool usage

2025 StackOverflow Developer Survey

AI tool sentiment

2025 StackOverflow Developer Survey

AI with Django

Leveraging AI: example

On this image management form, can you spot…

This is just one/two/three/four/five of many opportunities across an ecosystem of 20k+ packages, 500k+ Django projects.

The future of Django

My personal wishes

Organize locally, organize globally

Run a 20th birthday event!

It’s up to us! It’s up to the people in this room right now!

Don’t wait for others to decide where our project is heading

👉️ don’t wait for others to decide where the industry is heading

^ read: don’t leave it up to tech giants and their incentives

—

We have a lot of current, and future Django contributors in this room! And future Individual Members of our Foundation! Do we have:

Future Presidents or Vice Presidents?

Understand your motivations and get involved

It’s up to you! The future of Django is everyone here with us today.

Django turns 20 in 2025! This presents an excellent opportunity to think about the next 20 years – looking at trends, opportunities, and challenges we have to navigate as a community. We’ll review key aspects of the tech but also governance, and view this through the lens of what makes technologies compelling in the industry.

—

As President of the Django Software Foundation, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of Django. This talk presents my personal views on where we’re heading and how we can steer the project. Navigating industry trends like the Artificial Intelligence tsunami and our open source volunteering challenges, the future of Django is something we have to work actively towards.

Key topics

Notes