Hyvä Theme goes open-source: why the Magento ecosystem wins

Today we're celebrating a major milestone in the Magento world. The team behind Hyvä have announced that the Hyvä Theme will now be free and open-source under the OSL3 + AFL3 licences.

As an agency that builds all new projects with Hyvä by default, this is fantastic news, not only for us, but for the entire commerce ecosystem.

Why this matters

There are several reasons why this move is big news:

• Hyvä was born out of frustration with the existing Magento frontend options: slow performance, complex architecture, and a drift away from the core Magento experience.
• By going open-source, Hyvä removes the licensing barrier for agencies, merchants, extension developers and new entrants. Now the code is freely available, which means greater transparency, more collaboration and lower cost of entry.
• It enables the broader Magento community to build, extend and customise the frontend with fewer constraints. The hybrid benefits of a modern frontend plus ownership of data, functionality and flexibility are now more accessible.
• Smaller businesses, students, and first-time entrepreneurs now have even more opportunity to start with Magento + Hyvä, which helps grow the ecosystem at the lower end — and that helps everyone, because when merchants grow, agencies grow, extension vendors grow.

What this means for agencies and merchants

For agencies building with Hyvä, whether as a default frontend or on select projects, this shift opens up new opportunities:

• You can now position Hyvä as a truly open-source frontend that reduces upfront cost and risk for clients.
• The barrier to entry drops for smaller projects, exploratory builds, or merchants who previously hesitated due to licensing costs.
• Customisations, integrations and performance optimisations are no longer constrained by proprietary licensing — the code is yours to extend.
• As the ecosystem broadens, more extensions become Hyvä-compatible, more developers gain Hyvä experience, and talent becomes easier to find.
• For Hyvä partners, this reinforces your positioning: you're not just using a commercial theme, you're actively supporting an open ecosystem.

For merchants, it's straightforward: you get a modern, performant Magento frontend without the license fee. You retain full ownership, flexibility and control — which aligns perfectly with what makes Magento appealing in the first place.

Credit where it's due

This move deserves recognition. Willem Wigman and the Hyvä team built something out of necessity, grew it responsibly, and are now opening it up to the wider community. That takes vision — and a genuine belief in the Magento ecosystem.

The extension vendors, partner agencies, and developers who've built compatibility modules and adopted Hyvä early also deserve credit. Open-sourcing only works if the community steps in, contributes, and takes advantage of the freedom. So far, that's exactly what's happening.

What's next

From 10 November 2025, the Hyvä Theme will be freely available on GitHub and via free Composer keys through the Hyvä Portal. Supporting modules will be relicensed under OSL3, while other Hyvä products (Checkout, Enterprise, Commerce) remain commercial.

For merchants and developers who've held off because of licensing constraints, now's the time to explore it. Test it, build on it, contribute back if you can.

As an agency, we'll be looking at how we can contribute — whether that's code, best practices, or open-source sub-modules that extend Hyvä's capabilities.

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At Deploy ecommerce, we believe in building solutions that are performant, maintainable, cost-effective, and future-proof. The open-sourcing of Hyvä Theme ticks every one of those boxes.

It's a win for merchants, developers, agencies — and for the Magento ecosystem as a whole.