Is Drupal 10 end of life?
Not yet. Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026. From then on the Drupal project publishes no new Drupal 10 releases, including security updates. Drupal 12 comes out the same week, Drupal 11 stays supported.
It went the same way with the versions before: Drupal 9 ended on November 1, 2023, Drupal 7 on January 5, 2025. If you still run one of them, you get no fixes today.
Is Drupal 10 still supported after December 9?
No. On December 10 the website runs just like the day before, but every new vulnerability that affects Drupal 10 stays open on your site. And the longer an upgrade waits, the more depends on it.
When moving a client website from Drupal 8 to 9, it turned out the server ran PHP 7.0. Drupal 9 needed PHP 7.3, which only came with the next operating system. The upgrade became a server move, with new staging and live environments and an adjusted search. Drupal 11 follows the same pattern, it needs PHP 8.3 or newer.
What version of PHP does Drupal 11 require?
PHP 8.3 or newer, plus a newer database than Drupal 10.
| Software | Drupal 10 | Drupal 11 |
|---|---|---|
| PHP | 8.1 or newer | 8.3 or newer |
| MariaDB | 10.3.7 or newer | 10.6 or newer |
| MySQL | 5.7.8 or newer | 8.0 or newer |
| PostgreSQL | 12 or newer | 16 or newer |
| SQLite | 3.26 or newer | 3.45 or newer |
In our projects every major version came with a new PHP: Drupal 9 with PHP 7.3 and 7.4, Drupal 10 with PHP 8.2, Drupal 11 with PHP 8.3. Messepark Dornbirn, which we rebuilt directly on Drupal 11, runs on PHP 8.4.
Should I use Drupal 10 or 11?
Drupal 11. Time is running out on Drupal 10, and waiting for Drupal 12 means waiting until the contributed modules have caught up.
fuf.de and the Bosch Health Campus have run on Drupal 11 since 2025. We took the virtual city museum of Winnenden straight from Drupal 9 to Drupal 11. We move to a new major version ourselves only with its first or second minor release, for Drupal 10 with 10.1, for Drupal 11 with 11.1 and 11.2. For Drupal 12 that would mean waiting into 2027, while Drupal 10 no longer gets updates.
What drives the effort?
Mostly what drops out of Drupal: modules without a Drupal 11 release, old stopgaps and the patches every larger website carries for core and modules. This is what it looked like before we moved our own website to Drupal 11 in November 2025:
7 items before the upgrade, 5 of them blocking it.
- Server with PHP 8.2Server with PHP 8.3Drupal 11 needs PHP 8.3 or newer.Switched, the tools along with it.
- CKEditor 4 as text editorCKEditor 5Only a stopgap since Drupal 10.Every text field switched, the content stays.
- Seven admin themeBackend on ClaroOur editorial backend was built on it.Own admin theme rebuilt, new editing form.
- 3 modules only up to Drupal 10New major versions installedChaos Tool Suite, Devel Entity Updates, SVG Image.All three run on Drupal 11.
- 2 modules only up to Drupal 102 modules removedAdvanced Aggregation, Inline Entity Form.The website does fine without them.
- 5 modules without a job5 modules removedjQuery UI in four parts and Entity Browser.Old backend scripts dropped along with them.
- 51 patches to core and modules50 patches fitEach one has to fit the new version.10 dropped, 9 added.
Which version does your website run? Check it for free
We had only parked two of these items when moving to Drupal 10: the old CKEditor 4 text editor and the old Seven admin theme were only left as stopgaps there. With Drupal 11 both came back as work, on all three websites we have looked after since Drupal 8. If your website's module list still shows “CKEditor” without the 5, or the “Seven” theme, this part is coming your way too.
How do I update from Drupal 10 to 11?
In six steps, and the first is cleaning up.
Unused modules, fields and views go first. On one large website that was about a dozen modules before an update, from map display to image cropping. What is gone needs no updating.
PHP and the database at least at the level in the table above, at your host or on a new server.
Install new releases, replace or drop modules without a Drupal 11 release, rework the patches for core and modules.
Custom modules and the theme move to the new APIs. We do that once in our shared modules and then pull it into every website.
The upgrade runs on a copy with real content first. Every website has a fixed list of places we test each time, such as forms with a captcha, the search and outgoing email. For the Bosch Health Campus, automated tests in Chrome, Firefox and Safari also compare screenshots of the pages before and after the update. Then you click through staging and sign off.
Editors pause for a moment, then backup, upgrade, database updates and a check of the key pages.
Clean up
Unused modules, fields and views go first. On one large website that was about a dozen modules before an update, from map display to image cropping. What is gone needs no updating.
Prepare the server
PHP and the database at least at the level in the table above, at your host or on a new server.
Swap modules
Install new releases, replace or drop modules without a Drupal 11 release, rework the patches for core and modules.
Update custom code
Custom modules and the theme move to the new APIs. We do that once in our shared modules and then pull it into every website.
Test on staging
The upgrade runs on a copy with real content first. Every website has a fixed list of places we test each time, such as forms with a captcha, the search and outgoing email. For the Bosch Health Campus, automated tests in Chrome, Firefox and Safari also compare screenshots of the pages before and after the update. Then you click through staging and sign off.
Go live
Editors pause for a moment, then backup, upgrade, database updates and a check of the key pages.
What comes after go-live?
A few small things, and not every one of them comes from the update.
In the eight weeks after the move to Drupal 10 in August 2023, the Bosch Health Campus reported three small errors: one page showed a white error screen, fixed the same day, a captcha got stuck, the preview threw an error. In the same weeks, plain questions about drafts and publishing also reached us as “caused by the update”. Today the Bosch Health Campus gets a maintenance release every three months, and we install critical security updates right away.
Is Drupal 7 end of life, and how do you upgrade from it?
Yes, since January 5, 2025, and from Drupal 7 it is not an upgrade but a rebuild. There is no direct path from Drupal 7 to Drupal 11, the content moves into a new website by import. The biggest worry is usually the Google ranking. That is why every old URL gets a redirect to its new page, for the rebuild of Messepark Dornbirn there were 95.
On one rebuild from Drupal 7 the press releases went back to 2004. Our client decided to take over only the ones from 2016 on, which removed many special cases from the import. We archived the old website along with its database.
How we help
We are a Drupal agency in Stuttgart and have worked with Drupal since 2001. We look at your website, tell you what the upgrade to Drupal 11 needs and carry it out, also if another agency built the website. After that we can take care of all further updates in our website maintenance.
The initial consultation is free.
Sources
Last updated: November 2026