We've hand-picked some of the biggest stories at Laravel News and the Laravel community in 2025. This year, we saw huge product and open-source releases from Laravel, including Laravel 12, Laravel Cloud, and more!
While we had a hard time picking a single story each month (there were so many great releases this year), we've done our best. Did you do or see something great this year? Share your favorite Laravel content from 2025 on socials.
Let's take a look at the highlights of each month in 2025:
January: Tailwind CSS v4
In January, Tailwind CSS released v4, a jam-packed major release with new features that enhance the development experience, bring modern CSS features, and more. Here are some of the highlights:
- High-Performance Engine: Rewritten core with builds up to 5x faster and incremental builds over 100x faster.
- Automatic Content Detection: Discovers all template files without manual configuration.
- CSS-First Configuration: Customize and extend the framework directly in CSS instead of JavaScript.
- Container Queries: First-class APIs to style elements based on their container size.
- Modernized P3 Color Palette: Redesigned color palette optimized for vibrant displays.
- Dynamic Utility Values: Reduces the need for custom configurations with dynamic utility values.
- New 3D Transform Utilities: Add 3D transformations directly in HTML.
- Expanded Gradient APIs: Support for radial, conic gradients, and interpolation modes.
- @starting-style Support: Enables enter and exit transitions without JavaScript.
- Built-In Vite Plugin: Dedicated plugin for seamless integration and performance with Vite.
- And more...
January runners up:
February: Laravel 12
In February, we saw the release of Laravel 12, which introduced new starter kits for React, Vue, and Livewire, and updated upstream dependencies. Along with the open-source release, we saw the welcome page rebranded, a new Laravel website, and more.
February runners up:
March: Building an AI-Powered FAQ Chatbot with Livewire & PrismPHP
Our very own Harris Raftopoulos shared a tutorial on AI using various open-source tools in the Laravel ecosystem: Building an AI-Powered FAQ Chatbot with Livewire & PrismPHP.
March runners up:
April: Laravel Wayfinder Public Beta
In April, the Laravel Wayfinder Public Beta was released, a new first-party package that bridges your routes between the frontend and backend:
Laravel Wayfinder bridges your Laravel backend and TypeScript frontend with zero friction. It automatically generates fully-typed, importable TypeScript functions for your controllers and routes — so you can call your Laravel endpoints directly in your client code just like any other function. No more hardcoding URLs, guessing route parameters, or syncing backend changes manually.
April runners up:
- Memoized Cache Driver in Laravel 12.9
- NativePHP v1 is finally here!
- Screen is a terminal renderer written in pure PHP
May: A first look at Laravel Nightwatch
Laravel Nightwatch is a new product from the Laravel team that will give you awesome insights into your application's performance. It delivers the intelligence only a system obsessively optimized for Laravel can:
- Exception monitoring
- Issue tracker
- Slow Requests
- Query logging and performance
- Log viewer
- Users
- and more!
May runners up:
June: Defining a Dedicated Query Builder in Laravel 12 With PHP Attributes
Laravel 12.19 introduced a UseEloquentBuilder PHP attribute to define a custom query builder for your model. Models don't typically need a custom query builder, but you can use this technique to thin out models, group scopes in one central place, and include custom query builder methods you'll reuse in your application.
June runners up:
- Encrypt and Decrypt String Helpers in Laravel 12.18
- Laravel 12.19 Adds a useEloquentBuilder Attribute, a FailOnException Queue Middleware, and More
July: The Pipe Operator in PHP 8.5
July was a jam-packed month of excellent Laravel content, and I think The Pipe Operator in PHP 8.5 was a huge hit among Laravel and PHP developers:
The |> operator, or “pipe,” accepts a single-parameter callable on the right and passes the left-side value to it, evaluating to the callable's result.
Pipe (|>) evaluates left to right by passing the value (or expression result) on the left as the first and only parameter to the callable on the right. That is, the following two code fragments are logically equivalent:
July runners up:
- Laracon 2025
- Tinkerwell v5 is now released
- Everything We Know About Pest 4
- The Laravel Idea Plugin is Now FREE for PhpStorm Users
August: Filament v4 Released
Filament released v4, the next major version of the popular open-source admin panel built with Livewire:
It's official! As of today, August 12, 2025, Filament v4 is officially stable! And in large part, that is thanks to our incredible community and all the help with testing, bug fixing, and overall recommendations. We don't take for granted all of you and the work you've put in to help us get to where we are today.
Here are the highlights of the major features in Filament v4:
- Improved performance
- Tailwind CSS v4
- Built-in multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Nested resources
- New form fields
- Tools to reduce network requests
- Tables with custom data
- Improved bulk action system
- Restructured documentation
- And more
August runners up:
- Laravel Boost is released
- Everything We Know About Livewire 4
- Pest 4 is Released
- Inertia Releases a New Form Component
September: Laravel in Practice
Laravel in Practice is an ongoing series by Harris Raftopoulos featuring practical Laravel tutorials on the Laravel News YouTube channel.
September runners up:
- Laravel launches Laravel Learn with two free mini-courses
- Infinite Scroll in Inertia v2.2
- A New Local Error Page in Laravel 12.29
October: The New laravel Forge Released
The New Laravel Forge version was released in October this year, with Laravel VPS, Zero-Downtime Deployments, and a Fresh UI.
October runners up:
- JetBrains State of PHP 2025
- HydePHP - The Static Site Generator with Emma De Silva
- Image Manipulation in Laravel With Glide
November: PHP 8.5 Released
In November, PHP 8.5 was released with the pipe operator, URI extension, new array functions, and more. We covered many new features in PHP 8.5; you can see them all here:
- PHP Pipe Operator
- Native array_first() and array_last() Functions
- A New PHP URI Extension
- Retrieve the Currently Executing Closure
- PHP Fatal Error Backtraces
- INI Diff Option
- Support for Closures in Constant Expressions
November runners up:
- New Book: Laravel for the Rest of Us launches November 18, 2025
- Cache Routes and Config During Testing in Laravel 12.38
December: Laravel OSS Advent Calendar
Laravel launched an OSS Advent Calendar, which reveals a short video and spotlight on a different open source package every day from December 1 through 25.
December runners up:
Looking Forward to Laravel in 2026
Laravel News has published a ton of Laravel content this year to help you stay up to date with the latest news in the Laravel community. Be sure to join the Laravel Newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and connect with us on social media so you never miss what's happening with Laravel in 2026.
Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda are still bringing you fresh perspectives and in-depth discussions on the Laravel News Podcast, so you can keep up with Laravel wherever you are.
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Lastly, thank you, the Laravel News readers, watchers, and listeners! We appreciate your support!
