Craft CMS has announced it is rebuilding its foundations on Laravel, one of the most widely used PHP frameworks in the world. If you run a business on a Craft-powered site, this is the kind of change that can sound alarming but, handled correctly, is entirely manageable. Here is what you need to understand, and what the right response looks like depending on which version your site is running.
Craft CMS has been built on a framework called Yii 2 since its early days. Frameworks are the invisible foundations underneath what developers build on top of. Craft 6, due for general release in late 2026, will move those foundations to Laravel.
Laravel is a well-established PHP framework with a large developer community and a rich ecosystem of tools and packages. The Craft team’s decision to move to it is a vote in favour of longevity and a broader talent pool, not a sign that the platform is in trouble.
What this means in practice: the internals are changing, but what you see as a content editor and what your customers see as visitors is not.
The things that define the Craft CMS experience for site owners and content teams stay in place. The control panel, the content editing experience, the way fields, entries and sections are structured, the templating system, the plugin ecosystem, all of these carry over to Craft 6.
The Craft team has specifically taken a “strict port” approach rather than a rewrite. They have also built a compatibility layer that means most existing plugins should continue working with minimal changes.
Craft 6 also brings improvements for content teams: scheduled publishing, approval workflows before content goes live, better mobile editing, and a redesigned interface with dark mode support. For the people managing content day to day, Craft 6 will feel like a refinement, not a disruption.
It is also worth noting that some Craft sites are already built with a Laravel-powered front-end layer running alongside Craft’s content management. If your site was built this way, you are already working with the architecture Craft 6 is moving toward, and your upgrade path will be considerably smoother than most.
This is the most important question to ask, and the answer determines how urgently you need to act.
If you are on an older version of Craft, the Craft 6 announcement is not your most pressing concern. Your most pressing concern is that you are already running a version of the platform without active security or maintenance updates. The path forward is to get onto the current supported version first. Craft 6 can be planned for later.
If you are on Craft 5, you are in a good position. Craft 5 has been designated Long-Term Support, meaning it will continue to receive security and maintenance updates for five years after Craft 6 is released. In practical terms, that means continued support until at least 2031. You have time to plan your Craft 6 migration properly, without pressure.
The architectural change itself is well-managed by the Craft team. The risks for business owners are different, and more familiar.
Plugin compatibility is one. Although a compatibility layer covers most cases, plugins maintained by third parties will need to update for Craft 6. If your site depends on a plugin that does not receive an update, that is a gap your developer needs to plan for now, not when the upgrade is already under way.
Hosting environment requirements may also change. Laravel has specific server requirements, and not all hosting setups that work for current Craft versions will be suitable for Craft 6 without adjustment.
Most significantly: this upgrade will need a developer who actually knows Craft CMS. A generalist agency that happened to build your site years ago may not be equipped to navigate a framework-level migration. The Craft 6 transition is the kind of change that surfaces whether you have the right technical relationship in place.
You do not need to act immediately unless you are already on an older version of Craft, in which case getting onto a supported version is the priority regardless of Craft 6.
For everyone else, the most useful thing you can do is understand where you stand. Which version is your site running? Are the plugins your site depends on actively maintained? Is there a developer who understands the platform in your corner when the time comes?
If you are not sure of the answers, that is exactly where we can help. We carry out Craft CMS site reviews that cover version status, plugin health and forward planning, giving you a clear picture of where your site sits and what, if anything, needs attention before Craft 6 arrives. Get in touch to discuss your site.
Related Services
If you have been told that a project will be built using Laravel, or if you are evaluating options for a custom web application, you have probably encountered the name without a clear explanation of what it actually is. This is that explanation, written for business owners rather than developers.
Craft CMS has a strong but relatively specialised developer community. The difference between someone who has built seriously with Craft and someone who has touched it once or twice is meaningful. If your site runs on Craft and you need ongoing development or support, knowing what to look for matters.
The question most business owners ask is some version of: what will this cost? When it comes to Craft CMS support, the honest answer is that it depends on factors specific to your site. But there’s enough of a pattern to give you a useful framework.
Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl founded Expression 37 in 2007 and has worked exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS ever since. He does not take on work in other platforms and does not hand work to other developers. Expression 37 is deliberately small, because the kind of support that matters to clients with business-critical sites is specific to their site, not something that scales in the conventional sense. If you work with Expression 37, you work with Karl.
Find out how we workThornfields has relied on Expression 37 for our ExpressionEngine website for a number of years now, and the level of service has consistently been excellent. The site is central to how we promote our training programmes, so reliability matters a great deal to us. Any issues are dealt with quickly, updates are handled without disruption, and Karl takes the time to understand what we actually need rather than just applying a generic fix. We would not hesitate to recommend Expression 37 to any organisation that needs a genuine specialist looking after their site.
Chris Ibbetson, Head of Training
Thornfields Primary Care Training