esinergia is officially a Drupal Certified Partner Gold. The validation comes from the Drupal Association, was announced in April 2026, and represents the second step of the program after Silver. It requires doubling the minimum contribution credits (from five hundred to one thousand weighted annual credits), expanding the base of enterprise projects executed under community standards, and sustaining a growing roster of certified professionals in the Drupal and Acquia ecosystem.
The Drupal Certified Partner program, administered by the Drupal Association, was born in 2019 following Dries Buytaert's essay "Balancing Makers and Takers", where the creator of Drupal argued that the open source project needed formal mechanisms to recognize and incentivize sustained contribution to the ecosystem, not only consumption of its technology. The program evaluates organizations annually on two complementary dimensions: weighted contribution credits (code, documentation, mentorship, participation in strategic initiatives such as the Drupal AI Initiative) and annual financial sponsorship scaled to the size of the organization.
In the Drupal Association's own words: "Drupal Certified Partners represent the best of our community, innovators who turn ambitious digital visions into reality while strengthening Drupal's future as a digital public good."
Open source DNA, the commitment behind the tier
There is an operational difference between organizations that adopt open source as a commercial strategy and those that build themselves from inside the ecosystem. esinergia belongs to the second category. We call this identity attribute open source DNA.
Open source DNA is not a marketing claim. It is what becomes visible when an organization contributes credits to the core of the platform it operates on, sponsors the project's strategic initiatives, dedicates full-time collaborators to the community without direct commercial return, attends global community events as a participant and contributor (not as a commercial exhibitor), and builds its enterprise practice on the premise that the open source ecosystem is a common good that requires continuous care.
Through sustained commitment to Drupal as the sovereign engine of our value proposition, that initial bet has crystallized into concrete milestones. esinergia is Acquia Elite Partner LATAM, the only level in the region. Gold Sponsor of the Drupal AI Initiative. And now Drupal Certified Partner Gold. The three credentials are formal recognitions of the same attribute: an organization built inside the ecosystem, not on top of it.
Partner by contribution, how the Gold tier is earned
Drupal's partnership tier system has one characteristic that distinguishes it from most commercial programs in enterprise software: the tier is not requested. It is earned. We call this Partner by contribution, as opposed to Partner by contract.
A Partner by contract is agreed with a sales rep and signed with a purchase order. A Partner by contribution earns weighted credits to the ecosystem, year after year, with code contributed to the core, public documentation, mentorship to other contributors, participation in strategic initiatives, and financial sponsorship proportional to the organization's size.
The Bronze tier requires minimum credentialing. Silver requires five hundred weighted annual credits. Gold requires one thousand. Platinum requires even more. Each level is validated annually. Each year, the organization earns or keeps the tier only if contribution is sustained.
esinergia sustains continuous contribution to the Drupal ecosystem, with focus on the Drupal AI Initiative where we are Gold Sponsor. We dedicate full-time resources to the Drupal AI core, sponsor community events such as Drupal CMS Launch Colombia 2025, will officially participate in DrupalCon Chicago 2026, and share knowledge through panels, code, and mentorship across the ecosystem. Acquia recognized us with the Acquia Growth Partner of the Year LATAM 2023 award. Universidad de La Sabana, an esinergia client, is a finalist at the Acquia Awards 2026 in the Best Use of AI for Learning and Acceleration category, the most recent evidence of the sustained enterprise level of the practice.
These are not individual milestones accumulating into a trophy. They are the formal crystallization of a continuous operational practice that the Drupal Certified Partner system recognizes with a formal tier.
The team and the community, being part of something larger
The Gold tier does not belong to the founder. Not to the CEO. It belongs to the team. Behind the contribution credits, the Acquia Elite certifications, the sustained enterprise migrations, and the sector projects in healthcare, higher education, and government, there are real people at esinergia who write code, document modules, mentor other contributors, attend events, sustain core modules, and operate platforms for years.
By internal policy we do not name individuals in user-facing copy. But the Gold recognition is understood correctly only when the tier is understood as belonging to the collective esinergia team, not to a managerial role.
At the same time, esinergia is part of a much larger global community. The Drupal Association. The core maintainers. The Initiative contributors. Sister agencies around the world (Phase2, Four Kitchens, Lullabot, Zoocha, PreviousNext, Kalamuna, and many others). Regional Drupal Camps. The emerging LATAM ecosystem of partners and contributors. esinergia's Gold tier is not understood without that community. The global Drupal community is the ecosystem we are part of, not the audience we sell to.
What the Gold tier enables for enterprise clients
If you lead technology, digital transformation, or platform acquisition at an enterprise organization, the certification of your Drupal partner is not a minor detail. It is risk management information. Working with a Drupal Certified Partner Gold means, in concrete terms, the following.
Access to the Drupal and Drupal AI roadmap before public release. Gold partners participate in the strategic initiatives and have early visibility of platform advances, enabling enterprise architectures to be prepared before capabilities become publicly available.
Co-creation with Acquia, and with Dropsolid when applicable. As Acquia Elite Partner LATAM, esinergia participates in co-creation conversations with Acquia. The Drupal Association's Gold tier is complementary to that relationship.
Sectoral visibility recognized by the Drupal Association. Eligibility for Drupal CMS Trial Leads (a leads program available only from the Gold tier), featured marketplace listing of Drupal Certified Partners with direct contact form, case studies eligible for the Drupal.org homepage and the Best of Drupal series on LinkedIn, eligibility for sponsorship banner on the Drupal.org homepage.
Recommendation letter from the Drupal Association for enterprise RFIs and RFPs, available through the program and applicable to platform acquisition processes in regulated sectors.
Explicit regional differentiation. esinergia is the only Acquia Elite Partner in LATAM and now the Drupal Certified Partner Gold of the region. The combination is not currently replicated by other local partners. For LATAM enterprise organizations evaluating regional partners with backing from both organizations (Acquia + Drupal Association), esinergia is the reference choice.
In sector terms, this translates to four leading healthcare institutions, more than seven enterprise universities across four LATAM countries, three government entities, and a sustained enterprise practice level recognized externally by the Acquia Growth Partner of the Year LATAM 2023 award and Universidad de La Sabana's recognition as a finalist at the Acquia Awards 2026 Best Use of AI for Learning and Acceleration.
What comes next
Gold is not a destination. It is a current status that requires sustaining contribution to be preserved. The Drupal Certified Partner system re-evaluates annually. Tomorrow we could lose it if we stop contributing to the ecosystem. That is why the milestone is not a destination. It is continuous practice.
What comes next on the esinergia roadmap: continue contributing to the Drupal AI Initiative through 2026-2027, officially participate in DrupalCon Chicago 2026 with contributions to panels and code, close the first regional Dropsolid project during Q4 2026, produce sector Industry Deep Dives in Healthcare, Higher Education, and Government during Q3-Q4 2026, and continue the public conversation on applied AI with enterprise judgment initiated with the piece AI Empowers, It Does Not Replace.
Open source DNA is not commercial strategy. It is operational identity. The Gold tier is the formal evidence of that identity, not its definition.
If your organization is evaluating an enterprise Drupal partner for the next years of platform evolution, let's sit down to review how open source DNA translates into concrete operational practice for your context. We do not sell a generic answer. We map your specific context.