2026 PHP Migration and Version Adoption Trends

PHP migration ensures your application has the most up-to-date features, security improvements, and performance benefits available. However, despite the advantages of upgrading PHP versions, many teams delay the process due to worry over disruptions, heavy resource demands, and other challenges.

In this blog, I examine the current landscape of PHP version adoption. I then explore ways organizations approached or are approaching migrations in 2026. Finally, I inspect pain points standing in the way of successful PHP migrations, providing insight and tips on how you can use this data to prepare your team for the coming months.

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About the 2026 PHP Landscape Report

The 2026 PHP Landscape Report is based on a survey of self-identified PHP developers, administrators, and professionals. It details how teams are deploying, managing, and overseeing PHP-based applications in 2026, covering:

• Usage statistics and deployment trends
• Application security and compliance trends
• Observability and monitoring trends
• Containerization and orchestration technology usage
• PHP maintenance priorities
• And other trends and technologies leading the ecosystem

Our full findings are available as a free download, along with editions from past years. If you prefer to watch and hear our data, check out our on-demand webinar instead.

Get the Most Recent PHP Landscape Report

The Top PHP Versions of 2026

The PHP lifecycle moves quickly, with new major or minor PHP versions released annually. To help track ongoing trends around PHP version adoption and migration, we began this section of our survey by asking our participants a series of questions around current PHP usage and which versions of PHP they use within their applications. This included the ability to select multiple versions.

PHP 8.3 was reported as the most popular PHP version at 57% of applications. It was followed by PHP 8.4 (the most current version at start of survey) at 53%, PHP 8.2 at 41%, and PHP 7.4 at 32%. 

As a note, it should be pointed out that while PHP 8.4 adoption remains slower than PHP 8.3, this doesn’t reflect on one version over another. Many teams choose to lag one or two versions behind to avoid perceived stability risks, potential breaking changes, and other consequences.

PHP Version Adoption by Segment

We then segmented further to fully understand our findings, looking at PHP version adoption by major version, support status, company size, and container usage.

Across all segments, we didn’t see large deviations in PHP version adoption patterns, indicating broadly consistent behavior regardless of company size or deployment model. To me, this reinforces a clear and community-wide trend toward staying on supported PHP versions.

With that in mind, PHP 8.X’s domination of overall usage doesn’t come as much surprise, and it reflects our own customer usage stats at Zend, where PHP 8.3 and newer represent the most widely adopted versions.

That being said, nearly 20% of teams are still deploying 7.X versions. This is concerning, as PHP 7.4 end of life (EOL) arrived in 2022. These applications are increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated cyber attacks, newly discovered CVEs (such as CVE-2026-6735), and continuous performance degradation.

PHP Upgrade and Migration Trends in the Past Year

Next, we asked surveyed PHP users questions surrounding PHP upgrade and migration tends. We found that 68% of participants had completed a PHP migration within the past 12 months, and 32% had not. This is a slight decrease in migrations completed year over year, dropping from 76% in 2025.

When we compared our data across segments — including company size, container usage, and region — we did not find signification deviations. However, we did find that teams who were deploying EOL PHP versions with third-party PHP Long-Term Support (LTS) were 10% more likely to have completed a migration in the past year compared to those deploying EOL PHP.

This proves LTS as an enabler of modernization, not a blocker or procrastination tool. By extending the secure life of EOL PHP versions, LTS can give teams the flexibility required to plan migrations strategically, reduce risk, and avoid rushed upgrades driven by outside deadlines.

Yet, despite these clear advantages, we also found that only 1 in 4 teams deploying EOL PHP were utilizing third-party PHP LTS. 

The Top PHP Migration Destinations of 2026

For teams who completed a migration in the past year, PHP 7.4 was the top version they left, at 39% of participants. It was followed by PHP 8.1 (which reached EOL during the survey) at 30%, and PHP 8.0 at 29%.

Looking at destinations, PHP 8.4 was the top destination at 57%. It was followed by PHP 8.3 at 48% and PHP 8.2 at 29%. It is interesting to see PHP 8.4 as the top migration destination. As I mentioned earlier, many teams see the most recent PHP version as potentially unstable for at least a year, as new features haven’t been widely tested in production.

We also examined top migration destinations for those on specific EOL PHP versions, which are displayed in the following table:

Leading PHP Migration Pain Points

We asked PHP users who had completed a migration to share the most time-consuming component of their last upgrade, with the option to select more than one answer. As with previous years, we found that Testing (42%) and Refactoring (36%) were the top pain points. These were followed by Planning (9%) and Infrastructure Provisioning (6%).

As many PHP applications are built using frameworks — including Laravel, Symfony, CakePHP, and CodeIgniter — we also examined migration pain points segmented by framework technology, with all findings shown in the following charts.

Year over year, we see Testing and Refactoring as the most time-consuming aspect of PHP upgrades, so it wasn’t surprising to see that trend continue in 2026. Here is what my colleague Adam Culp (Manager of Professional Services at Zend) had to say about our findings, particularly around the variation in pain points by framework:

“In the case of CakePHP, I suspect that the higher pains felt around refactoring likely reflects required architectural changes introduced in recent major framework versions, where refactoring was unavoidable rather than optional. And, for many teams, regardless of framework or technology usage, implementing effective and thorough testing remains a challenge.”

Forecasting Upcoming PHP Migration Trends

Finally, we looked ahead to the coming year, and we asked our survey participants to share their upcoming PHP migration plans.

67% stated that they have a migration or upgrade planned within the next 12 months, and an additional 9% answered that they have a migration planned, but not in the next 12 months. 21% had no plans at this time, and 3% planned to retire their PHP applications in 2026 — this last statistic is notable, and it speaks to PHP’s enduring popularity (likely due to its strength in web application and API development).

Next, we asked those with upgrades or migrations planned to share their target PHP version, with the option to select multiple destinations.

Surprisingly, and going against the usual trend of waiting until a new version is proven stable, PHP 8.5 (which released during the survey) was the top planned migration target at 62% of participants. It was followed by PHP 8.4 (55%) and PHP 8.3 (17%).

Final Thoughts

The 2026 PHP Landscape Report highlights how PHP teams are migrating and upgrading PHP versions at a faster rate than we’ve seen in previous years. This underscores the language’s improvements in usability and developer-focused features. However, challenges like testing and refactoring remain significant obstacles during PHP migrations, and teams still must carefully plan and strategize before beginning their migration process. Failure to do so can result in interrupted user experiences, expensive downtime, extended migration timelines, and a costly draw on available resources.

One solution for streamlining migrations is to partner with an experienced and trusted third party, like Zend. We offer a full suite of PHP services to support mission-critical apps, including Migration Services, Custom Consultations, and flexible Black Belt PHP Service Hours. Explore your options, and contact us today to learn more.

Additional Resources

• On-Demand Webinar - Strategies for Modernizing Legacy Web Apps
• On-Demand Webinar - Enterprise Application Modernization: Hidden Costs to Watch
• Blog - PHP 8.1 Upgrade Plans: How to Stay Ahead of EOL
• Blog - PHP Upgrades: How to Plan and Execute Your Next Upgrade
• Blog - How to Plan a CodeIgniter to Laravel Migration
• Blog - Updating PHP for More Secure Web Apps