AEM Core Components: The Full List and How to Use Them

AEM Core Components are Adobe's standard set of components for building pages in Adobe Experience Manager: title, text, image, teaser, navigation, containers, forms and more. They are open source under the Apache 2.0 license and developed in public at github.com/adobe/aem-core-wcm-components. Each one is written in HTL, with its logic in a Sling Model, and outputs BEM-styled markup and JSON. Adobe uses them as the reference for how AEM components should be built.

The latest release is 2.33.0, published on 5 October 2026.

The full list of Core Components

Release 2.33.0 lists 31 components in four groups. The version column is the component version in the resource type path, for example core/wcm/components/title/v3/title.

Template components

Page authoring components

Container components

Form components

Form Container, Form Text, Form Options, Form Hidden and Form Button, all v2. These build simple forms. Adaptive Forms have their own, separate set of Core Components, covered below.

Two things people look for are not in the list. There is no data table component; Table of Contents is about headings. And Social Media Sharing is still listed but deprecated, which is why Adobe's own introduction speaks of 30 components.

Every component, with live examples of its settings, HTML and JSON output, can be explored in Adobe's Component Library at aemcomponents.dev.

How they ship: AEM as a Cloud Service vs AEM 6.5

Where the components come from depends on the platform, and getting this wrong is a common cause of failed cloud builds.

AEM as a Cloud Service

Core Components are part of the product. They are installed under /libs and Adobe keeps them on the latest release, so there is nothing to install. Do not embed your own copy in the project. The Cloud Manager pipeline warns and ignores an embedded copy, and Adobe's documentation says a coming release will make the build fail instead. When moving a project from AEM 6.5 to the cloud, remove the Core Components dependency from the pom.xml; your proxy components keep working.

AEM 6.5 and 6.5 LTS

On AEM 6.5 you install them yourself: download the package from the GitHub releases page and install it with Package Manager, then replicate it to publish. Projects generated with the AEM Project Archetype include them automatically. Release 2.33.0 needs AEM 6.5.21.0 or later, or AEM 6.5 LTS, and supports Java 8, 11, 17 and 21. Release 2.28.0 of March 2025 was the first to support 6.5 LTS and Java 17 and 21.

Versions and proxy components

Two numbers matter. The release (2.33.0) is the package. The component version (v1, v2, v3) is part of each component's resource type, and one release contains several versions of the same component. A component gets a new major version only when a change would break existing sites: its Sling Model, HTL, markup and CSS classes, JSON output or dialog.

Core Components are kept in hidden component groups, so authors never use them directly. Each site creates a proxy component instead: its own component that inherits from a specific Core Component version.

/apps/my-site/components/title
    jcr:primaryType = cq:Component
    jcr:title = Title
    componentGroup = My Site - Content
    sling:resourceSuperType = core/wcm/components/title/v3/title

Content then points at my-site/components/title, never at a versioned path. To move to a newer component version later, you change one property on the proxy, and no content has to be migrated.

Using them on a site

1. Create proxy components for the components you need, or generate a project with the AEM Project Archetype, which creates them for you.
2. On AEM 6.5, load the core styles by embedding the components' client libraries, for example core.wcm.components.image.v1, in your site's client library.
3. Allow the proxies in the layout container policy of your editable template. Core Components only work with editable templates; static templates and the Classic UI are not supported.
4. Define styles for authors with the Style System in the component policies.

Customizing a Core Component

• Dialog: overlay only the part you change in the proxy, using sling:hideResource to hide fields and sling:orderBefore to reorder them.
• Logic: write your own Sling Model that delegates to the Core Component's model, injected with @Self @Via(type = ResourceSuperType.class). The Core models are not meant to be extended by inheritance.
• Markup: copy the HTL file you need to change into the proxy. The HTL syntax is covered in our HTL tutorials.
• Styling: every component's markup uses BEM classes, cmp-<name> and its elements, so CSS can target it without touching the markup.

Never change Core Component code itself: a modified Core Component is no longer supported. The patterns behind all this are explained in modern AEM component implementation patterns.

JSON output and the data layer

Every Core Component can export its content as JSON through the Sling Model Exporter, which is what single-page applications and other headless clients use. The components also integrate with the Adobe Client Data Layer. It ships with Core Components and is switched on by default in projects generated from archetype version 24 onwards. When it is active, the page's body carries data-cmp-data-layer-enabled and window.adobeDataLayer.getState() returns the component data.

Adaptive Forms Core Components

Adaptive Forms have their own set of Core Components in a separate project, github.com/adobe/aem-core-forms-components: text box, date picker, file attachment, wizard, panels, captcha and more. They build on the WCM Core Components and come in two release lines, 3.0.x for AEM Forms as a Cloud Service and 1.1.x for AEM 6.5 Forms.

Are Core Components still the way to go?

For AEM Sites projects that render pages in AEM, yes. Adobe ships a new release roughly every month, and 2026 brought the Content AI Search component, semantic Quick Search and JSON-LD on the Page component. Adobe's documentation now carries one caveat: for new projects it recommends Edge Delivery Services, where pages are built from blocks rather than AEM components. Existing projects can keep using Core Components.

Common questions

Do I need to install Core Components on AEM as a Cloud Service?

No. They are already in /libs at the latest release.

What is a proxy component?

A component in your project whose sling:resourceSuperType points to a specific Core Component version. Authors use the proxy, and the proxy is where you customize.

What is the latest version?

Release 2.33.0, from 5 October 2026. The current list of releases is on the project's GitHub releases page.

What happened to the foundation components?

The foundation components are Adobe's older, proprietary components. Adobe recommends Core Components instead, and Cloud Manager's code quality rules flag the use of legacy foundation components.