Headful or Headless AEM: Revisited for 2026

Back in 2023, I wrote a blog post titled “Headful or Headless AEM? Why Not Both with Hybrid?” to highlight the benefits of a Hybrid AEM approach amid an increasing need for multi-channel content.  I noted that Headful AEM provided many benefits, including WYSIWYG authoring, decoupled code/content releases, and keeping authoring in one platform.

A lot has changed since then, including the introduction of Adobe’s Edge Delivery Services (EDS) and Universal Editor (UE).  Before I jump into what’s new, let’s review why some teams are looking to go headless after many years of headful experiences.

1. They need content creation and management shared by multiple downstream apps. This is often referred to as multi-channel content.
   • Traditionally, this has been supported by Adobe’s Content Fragment technology.
2. The engineering teams want declarative components (SPA-like experiences) rendered server-side.
   • AEM does not yet have native support for server-side rendered declarative ...