PHP is developed and maintained by a global community of contributors.
The PHP Foundation helps fund this work. If PHP is part of your business or projects, consider sponsoring the Foundation.
The PHP Project is primarily responsible for the development, maintenance, and distribution of the source code used to build the PHP runtime, along with its documentation.
The support timelines listed on php.net only apply to the maintenance of the official source code.
Other than those on Windows, or compiling from source, most people install PHP via third-party channels, which may have their own support timelines.
Each release branch of PHP is fully supported for two years from its initial stable release. During this period, bugs and security issues that have been reported are fixed and are released in regular point releases.
After this two year period of active support, each branch is then supported for two additional years for critical security issues only. Releases during this period are made on an as-needed basis: there may be multiple point releases, or none, depending on the number of reports.
Once the four years of support are completed, the branch reaches its end of life and is no longer supported.
As an enormously popular tool, many downstream vendors choose to offer PHP packages through their own managed repositories (such as linux distributions, cloud providers, or custom package managers).
These third-party packages may receive extended bugfix and security patch support far beyond the official timeline offered by the PHP Project
Please note: The PHP Project does not maintain or review these external packages. Questions relating to the packaging itself, vendor-specific patches, or EOL versions, should be directed to the relevant package maintainers.
The PHP Project cannot feasibly provide packages for every possible environment.
Instead, the creation of packages and executables is left to third-parties who take the PHP source code and compile and package it for their own environments, repositories, or other services.
Some of these third-parties, such as official package maintainers for Debian/Ubuntu, may offer long-term support (LTS) for everything they include in their package repositories for the duration of the corresponding LTS release.
Example: An LTS distribution which launches with PHP 8.5 might commit to support their own PHP 8.5 packages for the entire duration of that LTS distribution, which could 10+ years.
This might result in those distributions and package maintainers independently back-porting critical security fixes to their own version of PHP 8.5, even many years after The PHP Project has stopped officially supporting PHP 8.5.
The PHP Project does not maintain or review third-party packages and does not accept any responsibility for any issues that arise from their use.
Just because a package is available does not mean that it is actively maintained. Always check your third-party package provider for their support policy.
There may be a lag between PHP publishing a new version and a package manager making it available.
Package maintainers may choose not to provide packages for all major versions of PHP.
Some third-parties, such as the "Official Docker Community" image providers, simply compile the PHP source code just as The PHP Project provides it, and as such their support aligns with the same timelines as the official project.
| Branch | Initial Release | Active Support Until | Security Support Until | Notes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.2 | 8 Dec 2022 | 3 years, 6 months ago | 31 Dec 2024 | 1 year, 5 months ago | 31 Dec 2026 | in 6 months | Migration guide for PHP 8.2 | |
| 8.3 | 23 Nov 2023 | 2 years, 6 months ago | 31 Dec 2025 | 5 months ago | 31 Dec 2027 | in 1 year, 6 months | Migration guide for PHP 8.3 | |
| 8.4 | 21 Nov 2024 | 1 year, 6 months ago | 31 Dec 2026 | in 6 months | 31 Dec 2028 | in 2 years, 6 months | Migration guide for PHP 8.4 | |
| 8.5 | 20 Nov 2025 | 6 months ago | 31 Dec 2027 | in 1 year, 6 months | 31 Dec 2029 | in 3 years, 6 months | Migration guide for PHP 8.5 | |
| Active support | A release that is being actively supported. Reported bugs and security issues are fixed and regular point releases are made. |
| Security fixes only | A release that is supported for critical security issues only. Releases are only made on an as-needed basis. |
| End of life |
A release that is no longer officially supported by The PHP Project.
It may still receive some critical security patches, depending on the support policy of your installation source - Please consult your package documentation for more information. |
