Symfony 7.4 and Symfony 8.0 will be released at the same time at the end
of November 2025. Both will provide the exact same set of features, but with
important differences. Keep reading to learn how to prepare your projects for
these new Symfony versions.
Symfony Major and Minor Versions
Symfony releases a minor version (7.0, 7.1, 7.2, etc.) every six months, at the
end of May and at the end of November. These minor versions contain many new
features, but once released, they do not add new features.
For example, Symfony 7.3 was released in May 2025 with many new features. The
following patch versions, released monthly, will only contain bug fixes:
7.3.1 contains the same features as 7.3.0 plus bug fixes; 7.3.2 contains the
same features as 7.3.0 and more bug fixes; and so on.
Symfony Deprecations
Besides new features and bug fixes, software projects also evolve by renaming
configuration options, adding or removing method arguments, and similar
changes. If Symfony introduced these changes without a transition period, your
applications would break immediately after upgrading.
Symfony uses a different approach based on deprecations. When a change is
required, Symfony keeps the old behavior (marking it as deprecated) and adds
the new behavior at the same time. This makes Symfony generate a log message
whenever your application relies on a deprecated feature.
Some deprecations introduce a small performance cost. If Symfony added
deprecations continuously, at some point the overhead would become noticeable.
This is why Symfony removes all deprecations every two years when releasing a
new major version. In practice:
- Symfony 7.0 (Nov. 2023): no deprecations
- Symfony 7.1 (May 2024): introduces some deprecations
- Symfony 7.2 (Nov. 2024): includes 7.1 deprecations plus new ones
- Symfony 7.3 (May 2025): includes 7.1 and 7.2 deprecations plus new ones
- Symfony 7.4 (Nov. 2025): includes all previous 7.x deprecations plus new ones
- Symfony 8.0 (Nov. 2025): no deprecations
Symfony 8.0 = Symfony 7.4 – deprecations. Both versions share the exact same
features, but 7.4 contains all deprecation layers and 8.0 contains none.
Planning the Upgrade to 7.4 and 8.0
Symfony 8.0 does not include deprecated features, so you cannot use it if your
application still relies on any of them. Your upgrade path should follow these
steps:
- Upgrade your project from your current Symfony version to Symfony 7.4
- Check the deprecated features used in your application
- Fix all deprecations
- You are now ready to upgrade to Symfony 8.0
The best way to detect deprecated features in your application is to run your
test suite as:
$ php bin/phpunit --display-deprecationsThe output lists all deprecations, which can be:
- Direct: caused by your own application code and fixable by you
- Indirect: caused by bundles and libraries in
vendor/that still use
deprecated features; report these to the corresponding projects so they can fix them
If your application does not have tests and you don’t have time to write a full
test suite, consider adding smoke tests. They are quick to write and help you
identify deprecations.
A Community Effort
There are thousands of Symfony bundles, and your application probably uses
some of them. Bundles often require updates to prepare for major Symfony
releases. Help maintainers by reporting deprecations and contributing fixes.
Let’s make the Symfony ecosystem ready for Symfony 8.0.
LTS and Regular Versions
Another important difference between Symfony 7.4 and 8.0 is that 7.4 is a
long-term support (LTS) version and 8.0 is a regular version:
- LTS: receives bug fixes for 3 years and security fixes for 4 years
- Regular: receives bug fixes and security fixes for 8 months
An LTS version looks attractive because of the extended support, but consider
the following:
- If you choose to stay on Symfony 7.4 LTS, you’ll get bug fixes until
November 2028 and security fixes until November 2029. However, you won’t get
any new Symfony features for two years, until the next LTS version (8.4) is
released in November 2027. - If you choose to upgrade to Symfony 8.0, you’ll receive bug and security
fixes only until July 2026, but you’ll be able to upgrade to 8.1 (May 2026),
8.2 (Nov. 2026), 8.3 (May 2027), and 8.4 (Nov. 2027) without much effort.
This gives you all new Symfony features and continuous maintenance, and you
can fix deprecations gradually between minor releases instead of all at once
when upgrading to the next major.
The official Symfony recommendation is to use regular versions whenever possible.
