
An early look at Laravel 13's features and changes
When will Laravel 13 be released?
According to the Support Policy, Laravel 13 is scheduled to be released during Q1 of 2026.
The release of Laravel 13 doesn’t mean you must update all your projects immediately, though.
The framework last had LTS (Long-Term Support) in version 6, but each major version has two years of updates, which should give you enough time to get your codebase in check and upgrade it.
Laravel 12 will receive bug fixes until August 13th, 2026 and security fixes until February 24th, 2027. So, take your time!
Version | PHP | Release | Bug fixes until | Security fixes until |
---|---|---|---|---|
12 | 8.2-8.3 | February 24th, 2025 | August 13th, 2026 | February 24th, 2027 |
13 | 8.2-8.3 | Q1 2026 | Q3 2027 | Q1 2028 |
Install and test Laravel 13 right now
Laravel 13 hasn’t been released yet. Therefore, you must use the --dev
flag on the official Laravel installer, which pulls the main branch from the laravel/laravel repository that always contains the latest code.
laravel new hello-world --dev
Or, if you prefer to use Composer explicitly:
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel hello-world dev-master
What’s new in Laravel 13
Laravel 13 is in the early stabilization phase. The core team is doing all the “breaking ground” work needed for a clean, future-proof release. That means:
-
Upgrading the whole codebase to require PHP 8.3. No more polyfills, no more backward compatibility hacks. This clears technical debt and lets Laravel move faster.
-
Synchronizing versioning everywhere. All sub-packages and Composer metadata now point to
^13.0
, so you won’t get weird dependency issues or mismatched upgrades. -
Cleanup and modernization. They’re stripping out old fallback code, redundant parameters, and tidying up things lost in merges.
-
Hardening edge cases. A few tricky bugs (like Eloquent global scopes in nested queries and missing callback signatures) are getting patched to avoid long-standing footguns.
-
No big new features… yet. What’s shipping now is foundation work. Cleaning, aligning, and prepping the codebase for new features to be added smoothly in the coming months.
Check some of the Pull Requests:
- [13.x] Prepare branch alias for Laravel 13
- [13.x] Fix Tests/CI environments
- [13.x] Requires PHP 8.3 as minimum version
- More
Did you like this article? Then, keep learning:
- Overview of new PHP features relevant to Laravel 12 and 13 upgrade
- Best Laravel 12-ready books to deepen knowledge for upcoming versions
- Step-by-step guides to upgrade to Laravel 10 and 11 provide context before Laravel 12/13
- Comprehensive changes and features introduced in Laravel 11 before 12's polish release
- Early look at Laravel 12 to complement Laravel 13 feature insights
- Explore Laravel architecture best practices relevant for 2025 upgrades
- Basics and benefits of Laravel migrations, key for upgrading and maintaining apps
- Improve Laravel app security practices relevant during version upgrades
- Master Artisan commands to better leverage Laravel's CLI tooling in new versions
- Efficient caching techniques complementary to Laravel performance improvements
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