The PHP 8 Beta is Here

News

August 7th, 2020

The PHP 8 Beta is Here

The PHP team announced the release of the first PHP 8 beta yesterday! We are still about four months from the v8.0.0, but you can start preparing for PHP 8 by learning about the new features, the upgrade path, and key dates to make sure you’re ready.

What New Features are in PHP 8?

PHP 8 expands on the language with new features focusing on the language’s object-oriented design, types, and adding missing conveniences. Here are some of the highlight features coming to PHP 8:

Check out the upgrading document for the complete list of new features.

Timeline

This release kicks off the feature freeze portion of the PHP 8 release cycle. We’ll see a few more betas, five release candidates, and finally the general availability release on November 26, 2020:

Learn More

The following list of resources has everything you need to learn more about the upcoming releases:

  • The UPGRADING document includes backward-incompatible changes, new features, and everything else you’ll need to familiarize yourself with changes in PHP 8.
  • THh NEWS document has detailed notes about each release
  • The PHP 8.0 preparation tasks page has the release timeline of the upcoming beta and release candidate (RC) releases
  • You can download the PHP 8.0.0beta1 source from the downloads page

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Paul Redmond

Full stack web developer. Author of Lumen Programming Guide and Docker for PHP Developers.