Do I Need to Upgrade Craft 5?
No. If you're on Craft 5, you're where you should be. Craft 5 gets bug fixes until 31 December 2030 and security fixes until 31 December 2031, so there's no major upgrade to plan for yet.
What you do need to do is keep applying the minor and patch updates.
Keep applying updates
Craft 5 ships regular 5.x releases. The minor releases are where editors get new features, and we write each one up for site owners — here's 5.11, the latest we've covered. The patch releases in between are where most of the security fixes land.
This year has had more high-severity Craft security fixes than usual (here's our take on why), which makes staying current matter more. Small, frequent updates are much easier than big, infrequent ones. Most install cleanly: read the release notes, test on staging, then apply to production.
What about Craft 6?
Craft 6 is still in development. Pixel & Tonic have said on the official Craft Discord that the beta is due in 2026, and there's no date yet for the full release. We've covered what's in it in what site owners should know about Craft CMS 6.
Craft 5's support dates are fixed, so Craft 6 coming out doesn't start a countdown for you. You'll have years to look at it, wait for the plugins you rely on to catch up, and plan the move on your own timeline. We'll be waiting for a few point releases before we move client sites.
Should you plan for Craft 6 now?
Not in detail. The specifics will move between now and release. The one thing worth knowing is that Craft 6 moves from the Yii framework to Laravel. Your content and templates carry over, but if you're commissioning custom plugins or modules, ask how they'll make that move.
Regular health checks
Even without a major upgrade pending, it's worth a periodic look at plugin updates, the PHP version, hosting and security basics. That's part of what our Craft CMS support covers, alongside the monthly updates themselves.
Sources
- Craft CMS — Supported versions — active and security support dates for each major version
- Craft CMS Discord — Pixel & Tonic's latest update on the Craft 6 beta
- Craft CMS changelog
Andrew is Technical Director at Mutual, a Craft CMS Partner agency. He has been building with Craft CMS since its public beta in 2012 — working through every major version from Craft 1 to Craft 5 — and has delivered over 100 sites for clients including Apple, Transparency International, and Arts University Bournemouth.
He writes about Craft CMS on the Mutual blog and has contributed to net Magazine. At Mutual, he leads development of Mutual One, a marketing platform built on Craft CMS as its foundation.
He has spoken about Craft CMS to undergraduate students at the University of Brighton and Canterbury Christ Church University, and appeared on the Devmode.fm podcast. He has also trained other developers on working with the platform.
More from the blog
The Best Craft CMS Learning Resources in 2026
Where we'd send a developer learning Craft CMS in 2026: the official docs and tutorial, CraftQuest, the Discord, the newsletter and the conference talks.
How design and brand agencies can use Craft CMS to say "yes" to more briefs
We work with design and brand agencies as their development partner, helping them say "yes" to more briefs.
Common Accessibility Problems to Avoid in 2026
The accessibility problems we still see most often, what WCAG 2.2 and the European Accessibility Act changed, and how to catch what automated tools miss.