If you know WordCamp, you know Wapuu. If you’re new, you’re going to love this.
So here’s a fun fact to start with. Wapuu has been around since 2011, born out of a WordCamp Tokyo after-party. Matt Mullenweg simply asked the Japanese WordPress community how to get more people excited about WordPress locally.
One illustrator, one design, and one community naming poll later, Wapuu was born. And it was released under the same GPLv2 license as WordPress itself. That’s the whole reason Wapuu exists the way it does today.
Anyone, anywhere, can redraw it, recolor it, and remake it for their own community. That way, Wapuu never stays one thing. It just keeps becoming whatever the local community needs it to be.
And people have run with that. Over 145 different Wapuu designs have shown up at WordCamps around the world. Surfer Wapuus, samurai Wapuus, even a Wapuu wearing Athena’s helmet for WordCamp Europe.
Every city gets to answer the same question in its own way. What does WordPress look like here? For WordCamp Sylhet 2026, that question landed with designer Provath Ghosh, and his answer is one of the most personal Wapuus you’ll see this year.
About the designer
Hi, this is Provath Ghosh, a motion designer, video editor, and visual storyteller based in Sylhet, Bangladesh.
My work lives somewhere between structure and spontaneity where an idea begins as a loose collection of frames, colours, sounds, and half-formed thoughts before finding its rhythm. Translating complex ideas into experiences that feel clear, engaging, and human is something I cherish.
Well, the passion is to follow creative chaos wherever it leads. Sometimes it leads to a timeline full of keyframes; sometimes to an unfamiliar road, a passing conversation, a local tradition, or a detail hiding in plain sight. I collect inspiration from these encounters and try to give it a new form through design.
For me, creativity is less about waiting for perfect ideas and more about staying curious enough to recognize them when they appear.
The inspiration behind the design
This Wapuu is my tribute to Sylhet’s tea workers, the hands behind every basket of freshly gathered leaves.
The woven basket filled with tea leaves is therefore more than a decorative prop. It represents the patient, skilled work that lies behind something many of us encounter only as a finished cup of tea. The striped cloth and working posture draw inspiration from the visual language of life in the tea gardens, while the green WordPress emblem connects that local story with the global WordPress community.
On the colours
The colours were chosen with the same intention. Leafy greens reflect Sylhet’s tea-covered landscape, the earthy browns of the basket suggest craft and labour, and Wapuu’s warm yellow and orange retain the joyful personality of the original mascot.
On handling it with care
I also wanted the design to acknowledge its subject with care. It is not meant to reduce the tea-worker community to a cultural symbol or romanticize the difficulties behind plantation life. Rather, it is a small gesture of recognition: a reminder that the identity of a place is shaped not only by what it produces, but also by the people who make that story possible.
That is what makes Wapuu such a meaningful tradition. Every community can give the same character a new identity while remaining connected to a larger, open-source family. In this version, Wapuu brings together code and craft, digital creativity and human labour, and a worldwide community with a distinctly Sylheti landscape.
It is my way of saying that when WordCamp comes to Sylhet, it should arrive carrying a little piece of Sylhet with it.
See you on October 2nd and 3rd
So that’s the story behind the Wapuu you’ll see all over WordCamp Sylhet 2026. A mascot carrying color, craft, and a bit of Sylhet’s own soul into a global tradition.
And that’s really the invitation here. Come meet us on October 2nd and 3rd, and bring the same energy this little Wapuu carries. Some joy. Some color. Some curiosity about what WordPress can look like when a whole community gets to shape it.
That way, WordCamp Sylhet becomes more than an event on a calendar. It becomes a piece of Sylhet’s story too, just like this Wapuu.
See you there.
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