A New Look for Express · Express.js
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Edit on GitHub<br>announcements<br>A New Look for Express
Sebastian Beltran May 18, 2026
Express has been one of the most important frameworks in the Node.js ecosystem for over a decade. Millions of developers have built their first API, their first web app, or even their first startup with Express. Yet, while the framework kept evolving, the website remained largely the same for years.
In 2024, the Express project went through a major reboot. A new team, a fresh vision for the framework, and a clear path forward. That momentum inspired me to start contributing to Express with a simple goal: improve the documentation experience. Good documentation helps everyone, from beginners building their first server to experienced developers looking for the right API detail, or even those building frameworks on top of Express. In early 2025, that goal started to become a reality when the redesign of the Express documentation officially kicked off. What began as a documentation effort eventually grew into something much bigger, a complete redesign of the website and a brand-new logo for Express.
In short: we rebuilt the Express website, improved the documentation experience, and introduced a new logo and visual identity to match where the project is headed.
A New Website
Rebuilding the Express website was not only a visual refresh. It was also an opportunity to rethink the foundations of how the documentation is organized, generated, and maintained.
Under the hood, we moved from Jekyll to Astro, chosen after a long community discussion weighing tradeoffs and long-term maintenance. It gave us the flexibility we needed for content-heavy pages, strong performance, solid i18n support, and a component model that doesn’t lock us into a single UI framework.
What’s New in the Documentation
The redesign was also a chance to bring long-requested improvements to how the documentation works.
Improved versioning. Documentation pages now support multiple versions of Express side by side. You can read the docs for the version you’re actually running, and the content stays stable as new versions are released. The previous site didn’t make this easy to achieve, which often led to confusion between versions. This is especially helpful now that Express 5 is the latest stable release and many projects are still on Express 4.
AI-powered search. The new search is built on top of Orama and goes beyond keyword matching. You can ask questions in natural language and get contextual answers drawn directly from the documentation, which makes finding the right API or concept much faster.
llms.txt support. Every section of the documentation is now available through an llms.txt endpoint, following the llms.txt convention. This makes it much easier for language models, AI assistants, and other tools to access accurate, up-to-date Express documentation.
What’s Next for the Documentation
Launching the new site is just the start. The next phase of this effort is focused on the documentation itself, closing the gaps that have built up over the years and bringing every Express API up to the standard the framework deserves.
A few of the things ahead:
Closing content gaps. Many guides and API references still need fresh examples, clearer explanations, or rewrites that reflect how Express is used today, especially with Express 5.
Better translations. The site has solid i18n foundations, but most translations are incomplete or out of date. The goal is to make translating Express docs a simple contribution for any native speaker.
Keeping docs aligned with releases. New Express versions should ship with documentation that’s already ready, not catch up months later.
The new site is designed to make contributing easier than ever. If you spot something that could be better, an unclear explanation, a missing example, or a translation that needs love, please open an issue or a pull request.
A New Logo
One of the most visible changes is the brand-new Express logo. This wasn’t something we designed in isolation. It came out of a collaborative workshop with the Orama team, where community members and the Express Technical Committee came together to define who Express is today and where it’s heading. The entire process was handled publicly, so anyone in the community could participate and share their voice.
Before jumping into the visual identity, we worked together on the foundations that would guide every design decision.
Vision and Mission
We started by asking ourselves two simple questions: what is Express today, and where do we want it to go? The...