As I sit down to write this on the first day of 2026, I find myself looking back at what has been an extraordinary year for Blowfish. What started as a personal project to build my own Hugo theme has grown into something I never imagined - a thriving open-source community with contributors from all around the world.
By the Numbers#
2025 was a year of significant growth. Here’s where we stand:
- 2,500+ stars on GitHub (up from around 600 when I wrote the first tutorial in late 2023)
- 645 forks of the repository
- 241 contributors who have helped shape Blowfish
- 3,928 commits to the main branch
- 1,390 merged pull requests
- 16 releases throughout the year (v2.81.0 to v2.94.0)
These numbers represent real people who chose to use Blowfish for their personal sites, blogs, and portfolios. Every star, every fork, every contribution tells a story of someone who found value in this project. That means the world to me.
Feature Highlights#
We shipped a lot of new functionality this year. Here are some of the highlights:
New Shortcodes#
- Tabs - Create tabbed content blocks for better organization
- Gallery - Beautiful image galleries out of the box
- Gist - Embed GitHub gists directly in your content
- Video - Native video embedding support
Visual Enhancements#
- GitHub Alerts/Admonitions - Those nice callout boxes you see on GitHub READMEs? Now available in Blowfish
- Full Chroma customization - Complete control over syntax highlighting themes
- New color schemes - Added “github” and “one-light” schemes
- Mermaid dark mode - Diagrams now respect your theme’s dark mode
Technical Upgrades#
- TailwindCSS v4 - Major framework upgrade bringing better performance
- SEO structured breadcrumbs - Improved search engine optimization
- Base64 image format support - More flexibility in how you handle images
- Medium-zoom improvements - Better image zooming experience
Developer Experience#
- Blowfish CLI - A CLI tool to scaffold new Blowfish projects, install the theme, and configure everything automatically with a single command:
npx blowfish-tools. Now averaging 600+ downloads per month on npm.
Accessibility & User Experience#
- Zen mode toggle - Distraction-free reading experience
- Reply by Email - Direct reader engagement
Social & Sharing#
- Bluesky sharing support - Keep up with the evolving social landscape
- Mastodon sharing - Fediverse-friendly sharing options
Internationalization#
This year we added support for several new languages including Indonesian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (both PT and BR), Thai, and Ukrainian. A huge thank you to all the translators who made Blowfish accessible to more people around the world.
A Milestone Moment#
One of the most significant moments of 2025 came in October when I welcomed @ZhenShuo2021 as Blowfish’s first official collaborator.
Building an open-source project can sometimes feel like a solitary journey. Having someone step up to share the maintenance load, review PRs, and help guide the project’s direction is invaluable. This marks a new chapter for Blowfish - one where the project is bigger than just one person.
The Community#
Beyond the code, what makes Blowfish special is its community. The GitHub Discussions have become a place where users help each other, share their sites, and propose new ideas. The Q&A section is active, with community members jumping in to answer questions before I even get a chance to look at them.
I’ve seen Blowfish used for personal blogs, developer portfolios, documentation sites, and everything in between. Every time someone shares their site in the “Show and Tell” section, I’m reminded why I started this project in the first place.
Looking Forward#
As we head into 2026, I’m excited about what’s next. The foundation we’ve built is solid, and with a growing team of contributors, we can take Blowfish even further. There are new features on the roadmap, performance improvements to make, and always more ways to make the theme more accessible and easier to use.
If you’re using Blowfish, I’d love to see what you’ve built. Drop by the GitHub Discussions and share your site. If you’ve got ideas for new features or improvements, open an issue or join the conversation.
Thank You#
Finally, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to all the sponsors who have supported Blowfish throughout 2025.
Current Sponsors:
Past Sponsors (who supported us earlier in the year):
Buy Me a Coffee Supporters:
A special shoutout to the 37 supporters who bought me a coffee this year! Here are some of the kind folks and their messages:
- Jake The Dog - “I really like the Blowfish theme, such a well polished project.”
- Fabio Grasso - “Excellent work with the Blowfish theme! Thank you!”
- João Roque - “Awesome work in blowfish”
- Michael Dorner - “Thank you very much for your time and efforts in maintaining the amazing Blowfish theme.”
- Christian Birkenbeul - “Thanks for the amazing Theme!”
- merox.dev - “Keep up the good work!”
- Gürkan - “This was truly a breeze, thanks for your hard work!”
- nonstopnate - “Amazing job, you’ve clearly put a lot of work into it. So many customisation options!”
- Jinbo Pan - “I really like your theme especially it has pretty good documentation!”
- Aakash - “This is one of the best Hugo themes. Excellent features, detailed documentation, collection of user examples, so many variety of shortcodes. You have done a very fantastic job.”
- Alt Pole Art (Eden) - “It’s been the best static site theme I’ve come across in my many iterations of personal blogs!”
- João Castro - “Without it I would not be able to rebuild my online portfolio site while dipping my toes learning how Hugo works with your amazing documentation.”
…and many more including TB, Edoardo Rosa, and anonymous supporters who generously contributed.
Whether you sponsored on GitHub, bought me a coffee, or supported in any other way - your contributions mean the world to me. It helps keep the project sustainable and motivates me to keep improving Blowfish.
To everyone who has starred the repo, opened an issue, submitted a PR, answered a question, or simply used Blowfish for their site - thank you. Here’s to an even better 2026.
Want to support Blowfish? Consider becoming a sponsor or contributing to the project.
