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2025 in Review: Milestones, Expansion & Broadened Horizons
This past year has been a big one for Livingdocs. As we have continued to evolve as a company, we have experienced growth, undergone shifts, overcome challenges and celebrated major milestones. Before our team takes a well-deserved holiday, we’d like to invite you on a walk down memory lane to revisit what 2025 had in store for Livingdocs and give a peek into what we see on the horizon for 2026.
Customers: Big wins and new frontiers
It is no doubt that our customers form an essential part of our community. Without them there would be no Livingdocs. But it goes beyond the obvious economic element; our product is co-created with customers. We listen to their needs and shape our product according to our shared learnings. They are co-authors in our story, which is why we are so deeply invested in their success.
The year started off with our rollout at 20 Minutes being featured in Press Gazette.
Shortly thereafter, we celebrated Handelsblatt and their adoption of Livingdocs as their CMS anew, and published our success story showcasing how our dynamic, intuitive and scalable product is perfectly tailored to the evolving needs of their modern newsroom.
Longstanding customer Süddeutsche Zeitung, also saw a key shift. After having completed several successful projects with SZ, we completed yet another as their newsroom made the full transition from their in-house editor Lux to working in Livingdocs.
Ströer Media Brands, another longstanding customer, saw another one of their brands — kino.de — go live with Livingdocs, setting the tally at 4 brands having made the transition to Livingdocs as part of the ongoing integration of all the Ströer Media Brands products across platforms and channels onto our unified, comprehensive content management system.
The momentum didn’t slow as we then shared the news that CH Media had selected Livingdocs as its new CMS, and later that CH Media completed a successful rollout with Livingdocs.
This strong momentum carried us to a special milestone: Livingdocs won its first foothold in the Scandinavian market with Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK). With our first customers outside the GSA market, we are thrilled to see our plans and aspirations of regional expansion begin to take shape.
We closed out the year with one of our biggest announcements yet: That Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung went live and completed a comprehensive rollout with Livingdocs.
We are proud to know that our customers include all these news publishing powerhouses, and we are grateful for their trust as we continue supporting their newsroom transformation moving forward.
Partners: It takes a village
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we at Livingdocs feel the same idea applies to a good product. In this regard, partners, too, are key parts of our community. As such, we added three new product partners to our ecosystem: Tickaroo, Beyond Words and Norkon.
With our collaboration with Tickaroo, we are delivering a powerful, optimised solution to news publishers for real-time coverage and more advanced ticker capabilities on top of our own ticker tool.
With Beyond Words, we are now making it even easier for publishers to launch audio and video at scale. By using BeyondWords, publishers can seamlessly make every story available in audio and video.
With Norkon we are supporting publishers in their live reporting activities by availing the use of Norkon's Live Center.
Livingdocs Spotlights: From near and far
One of the best parts about building community is creating opportunities to bring everyone together. As we hosted a Livingdocs Summit last year, we kept things more intimate this year with two Spotlights — hybrid, live-streamed events we started in 2023 in which featured Livingdocs customers give presentations live from our office in Zurich on how they are innovating and optimising their newsroom workflows with Livingdocs.
For our spring Spotlight, we welcomed Neue Pressegesellschaft to discuss regional publishing and how they optimise their editorial processes for the multiple brands under their roof.
Last month, we hosted our autumn Spotlight featuring t-online, who shared their approach to managing planning and leveraging AI in their newsroom with the help of Livingdocs.
In both cases, we were grateful to have a big turnout of in-person guests, lively Q+A sessions and great conversations in between presentations over delicious food and drink.
In an era where AI is transforming how we work and communicate, these face-to-face gatherings feel more valuable than ever. While technology enables us to connect across distances and automate routine tasks, it's the human exchanges — the spontaneous conversations over coffee, the shared laughter during Q+A, the collaborative problem-solving that happens when people are in the same room — that spark real innovation and build lasting relationships. As our industry navigates rapid technological change, we believe that fostering these in-person connections and nurturing genuine community isn't just nice to have; it's essential to stay grounded and human-centered in our approach.
Product: Ever conscious and increasingly comprehensive
It is no secret that we have been shaping our product to become a fully comprehensive system for news publishers. We continue to add and refine industry-relevant functionality while keeping the product as streamlined and user friendly as possible.
Our focus this year has been on strengthening the print copy workflow, accommodating complex page management scenarios, enhancing the Media Center and introducing new steps that will take Livingdocs closer to being a one-stop shop.
For example, while we do, indeed, take a digital-first approach. Therefore, we know that we have to better support print workflows and progress has been made on this point.
We also have continued to expand page management functionalities in light of the drive towards adopting a more personalized, reader-centric approach to curation — especially in multi-brand houses — with User Needs and Brand Conditions, as well as other capabilities like Exposure Boosting and more advanced teaser functionality.
In addition, we have been enhancing our Media Center, particularly our image handling workflows.
Moving forward, we plan to continue the work we have been doing on agency modules, and to explore the use of AI in greater depth taking a pragmatic, even “conservative” approach. Not because we are afraid of innovation — we even hosted an AI Literacy course for the whole company — but because we want to invest in innovation that works and adds genuine value.
Inside Out: Moving and grooving
When it comes to Livingdocs being out and about in the world, we’ve made some noise, so to speak.
First off, Kress Pro named us the Best CMS of 2025 according to both market overview and direct user evaluation. We remain proud and invigorated by this ranking.
In September, we went to Dublin to attend the International Media Association’s Media Innovation Week, where we had great conversations and made great connections, as well as gained valuable insights on how the news media industry continues to evolve.
Speaking of INMA, we were contributors to the Digital Strategies Blog, touching on topics like leveraging tech to make content more human centric, shifting focus away from AI only to the full spectrum of technology tools for the best possible outcome and exploring how news publishers can amplify their authentic voice and strengthen their brand identity.
We also gave a second round of applause to the great news that Livingdocs was named in the CMS Vendor tool, a collaborative project by INMA and Google News Initiative.
In addition, we were present at PEIQ’s Publishing Days to give a presentation on our seamless workflows around working with print copy.
The connection to the outside has been strong, indeed, though the inside connection has been strengthened just the same, if not more.
One of our biggest milestones yet: Livingdocs turned 10. As such, we celebrated in style with a beautiful summer party full of great music, a fantastic feast and even some night swimming on the lake.
Livingdocs Turns 10
As the company is getting older, the team is continuing to grow. For example, Ruben Schönenberger joined Livingdocs to add more knowledge and power to our Editorial Consulting Team as they advise on newsroom transformation projects. We also saw several new members join in the Product and CuSo departments (see the whole gang here!). This writer can say that she is still in awe of how much the company has grown in her 3 years at Livingdocs… From 13 to 33 — it’s amazing what being friendly and fun and getting your work done can do!
Outlook: New levels unlocked
It has been an intense year, and while it required a new level of focus and stamina, we know that this is a natural consequence of growth. As one expands, recalibrations follow in order to properly hold that newfound expansion — both literally and figuratively.
And as we stand at the edge of one more year, we are able to see what’s ahead with an elevated perspective and renewed purpose. Onwards and upwards into 2026!