Odoo Experience Brussels: Odoo 20, AI, Growth and a Few Expensive Taxi Rides
❮ Author: Andy Scott Published: 06/10/2026
Odoo 20, AI, big announcements, bigger opportunities — and one very expensive taxi ride. Here’s what the Calibrate team brought home from Brussels.
What a great Odoo Experience in Brussels for the Calibrate team and for the wider Odoo community.
Fabien and Wynand shared the latest Odoo highlights, alongside the wider Odoo team, during what has been another record year of growth for Odoo.
There is a certain symmetry here.
It has also been a record year of growth for Calibrate.
So, four members of the team, Andy, Anne, Shaun and Hamish, headed to Brussels to find out what Odoo 20 has in store and, of course, to enjoy everything else that Odoo Experience has to offer.
Getting to Brussels: not quite according to plan
The trip started with the red-eye.
After arriving, we spent the day working remotely with clients from the cobbled streets of Brussels, fuelled by golden IPA, Leffe and Sauvignon Blanc.
We needed a laugh after the journey.
Our pre-paid €90 Booking.com taxi had apparently decided that three minutes was long enough to wait for us while we came through customs.
Three minutes.
So, instead, we opted for a €200 taxi ride from Charleroi Airport to the centre of Brussels.
Naturally, we decided the sensible thing to do was throw an expensive team lunch into the mix on the way to the Manneken Pis.
We'd already had enough taken out of us financially, so why not?
Things then took another turn.
The apartment incident
Shaun and Hamish arrived at their apartment to discover that the door handle had fallen off.
What greeted them on the other side was apparently such a warm welcome that it would have been perfectly suitable accommodation for a spider or possibly an anteater.
Booking.com later told us the detached door handle was apparently the deliberate work of the smallest member of the team.
Something about "captured on CCTV".
Let's say there was some scepticism around that particular explanation.
Three hours later, Anne finally managed to get them settled into alternative accommodation.
The casino downstairs wasn't mentioned in the original Booking.com description either.
But, as they say, sometimes you just have to take a gamble.
The Big Odoo Announcements
Thankfully, the Odoo announcements were considerably more reassuring.
One of the headline announcements was a 20% increase in the price of Odoo Enterprise, effective immediately.
It may bring pricing more in line with inflation since the previous announcement, but it certainly got everyone's attention.
For the Odoo ecosystem, that's potentially significant.
At Calibrate, we've continued to invest heavily in our Odoo capability, including the recent addition of a fantastically talented Odoo Developer and a hugely experienced and brilliant Odoo Functional Consultant.
So, naturally, a significant Odoo price increase was exactly what we wanted to hear!
Perhaps next year we'll need to take a private jet to Brussels.
Although, given our experience with taxis, perhaps not.
Odoo 20: plenty to get excited about
Away from pricing, there was a huge amount to be positive about.
The latest release brings enhancements across many of the areas our customers use every day, including:
- Planning
- Accounting
- CRM
- eCommerce
- Inventory
- Human Resources
- Point of Sale
- Shopfloor
- Field Service
- Employee management
One of the most interesting themes throughout the event was the continued development of Artificial Intelligence.
AI moves from feature to framework
AI has been a constant theme around Odoo for some time, but what is particularly interesting about the latest developments is how AI is becoming increasingly integrated into the Odoo ecosystem.
The MCP connector is a great example.
Rather than AI existing as a standalone feature, MCP provides a framework through which external AI systems can interface directly with Odoo applications.
That opens up some exciting possibilities.
AI can potentially interact with Odoo, automate tasks and execute operational workflows rather than simply providing answers or generating text.
At Calibrate, this is an area we are already heavily involved in.
In fact, one of our development team has the best-selling Odoo App for AI — developed in his spare time.
So we know first-hand just how quickly this area is developing.
But AI isn't a replacement for Odoo expertise
There is, however, an important warning here.
We recently received a call from a group with around £50 million in revenues that had implemented Odoo Enterprise after employing a very clever individual who was new to the business and had never used Odoo before.
They had used Claude and a series of carefully designed prompts to attempt to get the business live on Odoo in less than two months.
It was certainly ambitious.
They subsequently asked Calibrate to carry out an audit and provide experienced functional consultants, developers and project managers to help them move forward.
Having reviewed the situation, our conclusion was that the best approach wasn't to try to unravel everything that had been done.
Instead, we'll copy the relatively small amount of transactional data and start again.
There is an important lesson here.
AI is incredibly powerful, but it doesn't replace experience.
Successful Odoo implementation still requires a detailed understanding of business processes, functional configuration, development, data and project management.
AI can accelerate the right approach.
It can also accelerate the wrong approach.
Knowing the difference is where experienced Odoo professionals add real value.
Light Users: another useful development
Another development that caught our attention was the new Light User capability.
For our customers, this has the potential to be particularly useful for administrative HR activities such as self-onboarding and employee administration.
It also extends into business applications such as:
- Point of Sale
- Inventory Barcode
- Shopfloor
- Field Service
- Employee Directory
And now it works offline too.
That's a great example of Odoo listening to feedback from partners such as Calibrate and our customers — and then delivering something practical.
Of course, there is one obvious question.
If Odoo is already so cost-effective, how do you justify having a Light User when the standard user subscription is already relatively small?
Raise the price, of course!
JUSTIFIED.
Beyond the presentations
We certainly didn't manage to get anywhere near all of the 400+ expert talks available at Odoo Experience.
There was simply too much going on.
We did, however, spend plenty of time speaking to exhibitors, meeting people from across the Odoo ecosystem and learning more about the latest developments.
Anne attended the Accounting Masterclass, while the rest of us absorbed as much as possible from the wider event.
There was also time for some of the more important things in life.
Beer.
Wine.
Food.
And the live concerts were great fun.
Shaun and Hamish were particularly looking forward to the Eden Hazard talk.
Unfortunately, they forgot one small detail.
Anne is the only member of the team who actually practises her French.
Bringing Odoo 20 back to the UK
For us, the real value of Odoo Experience starts when the event finishes.
We're now bringing the insights, ideas and energy from Brussels back into our UK operations.
We'll also be sharing what we've learned through local events, including our event in Aberdeen on 19 November.
Some of our existing customers will soon be upgrading to Odoo 20, while all of our new Odoo projects will be delivered on the new version.
We're also spending time bringing the wider Calibrate team up to speed.
Not everyone could make the trip to Brussels, so we're sharing the new functionality, lessons learned and the general enthusiasm generated by the event with the rest of the team.
Over the coming months, we'll be getting into the details of Odoo 20 so that we can help our customers understand what has changed, where the opportunities are and how they can make the most of the new functionality.
What's next for Calibrate and Odoo?
Odoo Experience 2026 was a great reminder of just how quickly the platform continues to evolve.
The combination of improved core applications, greater flexibility, AI integration, offline functionality and new approaches to user access creates plenty of opportunities for businesses already using Odoo — and for organisations considering a move to the platform.
But technology is only part of the story.
Successful ERP projects still depend on good people, good processes and good decisions.
That's why we're continuing to invest in our team, our technical capability and our understanding of the businesses we support.
So, despite the expensive taxi, questionable accommodation, slightly excessive lunches and the general chaos of getting four people around Brussels, it was a worthwhile trip.
We came home with new ideas, new knowledge, plenty of stories and a lot of excitement about what comes next.
Bring on Odoo 20.
👉 Read the full Odoo 20 release notes:
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