Roadmap

In 2025, Sourcefabric and its family of core users achieved a major milestone by funding and executing a fundamental change regarding the underlying technology of its open-source platform, to make it future-proof for years to come. Superdesk version 3 uses asynchronous technology for its backend operations. It is faster, more robust and capable of handling more items simultaneously in a busy news cycle, with lower server impact.

After supporting our customers for the last couple of years in integrating AI features into their Superdesk workflows, 2026 will be the year to introduce a Superdesk AI API for our customers to build upon, as well as some out-of-the-box Superdesk AI core features for editors, such as translations, headline suggestions, or summary creation.

Improvements and refinements for the Superdesk async version

Continuing to build on the foundation of Superdesk's asynchronous architecture, versions 3.3 through 3.6 focus on stability, usability, and new quality improvements.

• Support node 22
• UI/UX improvements in the Planning component
• Filter events and planning items by created date
• Unassign an assignment via the Planning item’s Coverage
• Editor: Character count based on cursor position and keep character count visible in longer texts
• Editor: Show the article’s status in the editor
• Remove Controlled Vocabularies via the UI, with more robust Subject CVs handling
• Image preview improvement by adding a “Download Original” option

Target release date: Q2 2026

Expanding Superdesk's capabilities with AI and metadata

Version 3.7 will introduce the Superdesk AI API, ninjs version 3.1 and updates to NewsML G2 to handle AI-related metadata (digitalsourcetype), and improvements to metadata handling for media upload and editing.

Target release date: Q3 2026

Bringing new AI features and right-to-left language support

Version 3.8 will deliver out-of-the-box AI features such as translations and summaries, a fully refactored authoring environment, and support for right-to-left user interfaces.

Target release date: Q4 2026

Though these features aren’t currently on our roadmap for Superdesk, they would add useful functions to the system. If you might be interested in co-developing them with us, please get in touch.

Offline editing

This feature will allow editors and journalists to continue writing articles without any internet connection. Once the internet connection is restored, content will automatically be updated and saved.

Mobile-friendly Superdesk

A lighter-weight, simplified version of the Superdesk editorial interface, this is aimed at facilitating collaboration among freelancers working with news organisations as well as staff reporters who are physically outside the newsroom and filing their stories from a mobile device.

Infographic management

Based on metadata, this would enable media items containing infographics to be indexed independent of the particular file or media type (png, jpg, JS, embeds, ai).