Drupal 9 will reach end-of-life alongside two of its key components (Symfony 4 and CKEditor 4 on November 1, 2023). There is a small chance that a final security release of Drupal 9 could be issued between November 1 and November 30, 2023 if one of these dependencies chooses to do so as well.
What’s new in Drupal 10.0.0?
Better looking on the frontend and backend
For now, CKEditor 4 is also available as a contributed project, so you can continue using that for Drupal 10 for now until its end of support.
CKEditor 5 is the new content editor
All new features will be added to only Drupal 10 going forward. Several key improvements are already in the works as contributed projects. The Project Browser contributed project is now in beta and includes a Composer-based user interface to install contributed projects with all their dependencies. The Automatic Updates contributed project is already stable, allowing you to apply patch-level core updates to your site. (Experimental support is included for minor version updates and contributed project updates). The Recipes initiative is less far along but already has early versions of automation functionality to ship composable bundles of Drupal modules and configuration.
All of these are planned to be added to Drupal 10 core in the future and will help users find, keep up with and combine all the fantastic contributed projects the Drupal community is famous for.
Internet Explorer support is removed
Thanks to 2129 contributors from 616 organizations resolving 4083 issues in the past two and a half years, Drupal 10.0.0 is available today! This new version sets Drupal up for continued stability and security for the longer term. All new features will be added to Drupal 10 going forward.
Responsive grids in views
Drupal 9.4 and 9.5 will both receive security fixes until the release of 10.1 on June 21, 2023. After that date, Drupal 9.5 will be the only Drupal 9 version to receive security fixes until the November 2023 end-of-life.
Starterkit theme generation tool
Drupal 10.0 depends on the Symfony 6.2 framework, and later Drupal 10 minor versions will be updated to future minor versions of Symfony 6. This sets Drupal up with the latest version of the underlying platform.
Requires Symfony 6.2 and PHP 8.1
The new Olivero theme provides a modern look and feel. Olivero includes built-in support for multi-level menus and listings in responsive grids. The new administration theme, Claro, provides an accessible, clean interface for site management. The prior default themes Bartik and Seven are available as contributed projects if you wish to use them.
Read the release notes for more information about platform requirements, removed modules and themes, dependency changes, etc.
Non-essential features removed
Drupal 10.0.0 includes all of the features that were added to Drupal since 9.0, such as lazy image loading support for better frontend performance, WebP support in image styles, a dedicated Content Editor user role, “Manage permissions” tabs for entity bundles, and bundle classes on the PHP level for better code encapsulation, among many other improvements.
All features added since Drupal 9.0 are still here
Drupal 10 removes deprecated APIs. Use Upgrade Status on Drupal 9 to check your custom modules and themes for the changes needed. Upgrade Status will also give suggestions on automating the fixes.
Thousands of contributed projects ready at launch
The Quick Edit, Aggregator, HAL, RDF, and Color modules have been removed from core. They are available as contributed projects. This allows Drupal 10 to focus on the core strengths of the system.
The future of Drupal 10
Translators should check localize.drupal.org for any untranslated strings.
Drupal 8 is end of life as of November 17, 2021. There is no direct upgrade path to Drupal 10 from Drupal 8, so you will need to first upgrade from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. There are disclosed security issues with Drupal core that are not fixed in any Drupal 8 version, so if you have not yet upgraded to Drupal 9, do so as soon as possible.
Things to consider when updating to Drupal 10
As PHP 7 reached end of life on November 28, 2022, it was clear Drupal 10 must require at least PHP 8. Symfony 6.2 requires PHP 8.1 and choosing that version provides the best support timeline for Drupal 10 itself as well. PHP 8.2 is also fully supported.
What does this release mean for me?
Drupal 10 introduces a new command line tool to generate a standalone theme from a compatible base theme. We recommend using the tool to prevent breaking a sub-theme when the base theme changes. Runtime theme extension is still supported, but only advised if you have full control of the base theme (e.g. by creating it with the starterkit command).
Drupal 9 site owners
Views now supports a responsive grid display format. Instead of specifying the number of columns, and screen widths, users specify the maximum number of columns, the minimum grid cell width and the gutter spacing. When the grid cells resize to a point where they’re below the minimum width, the grid will reflow to have less columns. Alternatively, the grid will expand to fit in as many columns as permitted, while keeping the grid width above the minimum value. Dropping Internet Explorer 11 support enabled the addition of this feature.
Drupal 7 support was extended until January 5, 2025, and it will continue to receive limited bug and security fixes until that date. The migration path for Drupal 7 sites to Drupal 10 is stable. Choose which Drupal major version to update to based on your project timeline. Read more about the migration to Drupal 10.
Drupal 8 site owners
With CKEditor 4 reaching end of life at the end of 2023, it was time to upgrade. Thanks to a fantastic collaboration with its developers, Drupal 10 comes with CKEditor 5 built-in. The new version brings a modern editing experience with in-place controls and support for arbitrary input and output formats. Optional premium features are also available, such as live collaborative editing. An upgrade path is provided to move editor settings over and developer tools are available to help port any custom integrations. Read more in CKSource’s very extensive blog post.
Drupal 7 site owners
Upgrades to Drupal 10 are supported from Drupal 9.4 and 9.5. However, Drupal 9.4 will no longer receive normal bugfixes. For continued bugfix support, Drupal 9 users should update to Drupal 9.5 now.
Module, theme and translation contributors
Thanks to the diligent work of the Drupal community on automated code update tools, porting events and dedicated work on key projects over the past two and a half years, Drupal 10 launches with almost three thousand compatible extensions, 26% more than how many Drupal 9 launched with.
Microsoft has ended support for Internet Explorer and so has Drupal. This allows Drupal themes to use modern solutions for user facing problems.
