diff --git a/docs/index.md b/docs/index.md
index 25a82f7..34457b5 100644
--- a/docs/index.md
+++ b/docs/index.md
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 hide:
   - navigation
   - toc
+template: "frontpage.html"
 ---
 
 # HPCE User Documentation
@@ -20,3 +21,5 @@ researchers, staff, and external collaborators, such as the Merlin series of
 HPC clusters. Furthermore the HPCE group engages in research activities on
 technologies (data analysis and machine learning technologies) used on these
 systems.
+
+<!-- note that further content is dynamically added via the overrides/frontpage.html template -->
diff --git a/docs/news/posts/new-user-docs-2026.md b/docs/news/posts/new-user-docs-2026.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..daa93e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/news/posts/new-user-docs-2026.md
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+date:
+  created: 2026-01-12
+tags:
+  - getting_started
+  - draft
+---
+
+# New User Documentation Site
+
+Starting in 2026, we are changing the design of the user documentation website.
+Previously we had used the [documentation
+theme](https://github.com/tomjoht/documentation-theme-jekyll) together with the
+[Jykell SSG](https://jekyllrb.com/), but have now switch to the more modern
+[Material for MkDocs](https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/) theme and
+SSG engine. This comes with a few improvements:
+
+* searching is more complete and provides better results
+* theme related improvements (day-night coloring, page layout, content formatting)
+* edits for pages can be submitted via the *Edit* (this will direct you to the Gitea repository which hosts the documentation)
+
+TBD
diff --git a/mkdocs.yml b/mkdocs.yml
index 1139287..29d7ad7 100644
--- a/mkdocs.yml
+++ b/mkdocs.yml
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ theme:
   name: material
   favicon: images/favicon.ico
   logo: images/hpce_logo.png
+  custom_dir: overrides
   features:
     - navigation.instant
     - navigation.tabs
diff --git a/overrides/frontpage.html b/overrides/frontpage.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..adb8282
--- /dev/null
+++ b/overrides/frontpage.html
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+{% extends "base.html" %}
+
+{% block content %}
+{{ super() }}
+
+<!-- latest news requires that we have the blog plugin configured! -->
+{% if pages %}
+<h2 id="latest-news">Latest News</h2>
+<ul class="frontpage_style">
+  {# we only capture the two newest entries #}
+  {% for file in (pages | selectattr('page.meta.date') | sort(attribute='page.meta.date.created', reverse=true))[:2] %}
+  <li><a href="{{ file.dest_uri }}">{{ file.page.title }}</a> &ndash; <time datetime="{{ file.page.meta.date.created }}"> {{- file.page.meta.date.created | date -}}</time></li>
+  {% endfor %}
+</ul>
+{# TODO we should try using the pages object to always get the correct relative uri #}
+<p>&rarr; See <a href="/news/index.html">News</a> for more...</p>
+{% endif %}
+{% endblock %}