We’re excited to announce that Craft 5 is now in Beta!
Craft 5 brings huge improvements across the board, from authoring experience to content modeling to DX. It’s our biggest, most ambitious update—ever.
Authoring
Refined UI. Every corner of the control panel has been touched up to be lighter, crisper, and friendlier. There’s a new icon set, the global sidebar is collapsible, and breadcrumbs are more functional.
Element cards. Element indexes and relational fields can display elements as cards with a large thumbnail and customizable content preview.
Element thumbnails. Field layouts can now designate an Assets field that should be used to provide thumbnails for entries’ chips and cards throughout the control panel.
Entry type icons and colors. Give the control panel a splash of color. Each element type can choose an icon and color, which will add a tint to entries’ chips, cards, and inline Matrix blocks.
Element action menus. Element chips, cards, and slideouts now include action menu buttons, with shortcuts to common actions like editing the element, or viewing it in a new browser tab.
Bulk inline editing. Element indexes now support inline editing of all visible elements, from the table view.
Tabs, UI elements, and conditions come to Matrix. Matrix fields have full support for all field layout features.
Live conditions. User edit pages and inline-editable Matrix blocks now support live conditions.
2FA and Passkeys. Enhance your account security with two-step verification, and speed up logins with a passkey, based on fingerprint or facial recognition.
Accessibility improvements. Craft 5 makes a huge leap forward in our effort to reach WCAG AA compliance. We’ll post an updated Accessibility Conformance Report once 5.0.0 (stable) is released.
Content modeling
Matrix in Matrix. Matrix fields now manage nested entries, and there’s no limit to how deeply-nested your content can be.
Nested entries for CKEditor. Our CKEditor plugin has been updated for Craft 5, and we’ve added the ability to create nested entries right within your rich text content!
Decoupled entry types. Entry types are now created independently of sections, so they can be reused by multiple sections, as well as Matrix and CKEditor fields.
Matrix view modes. Customize how authors interact with your Matrix fields. Choose from inline-editable blocks, cards, or a full-blown element index (with inline editing!) embedded right into the parent entry’s edit form.
Field instances. Most custom fields can now be included multiple times in the same field layout, with each instance having its own name, handle, instructions, and conditions.
Multiple authors. Entries are no longer limited to having a single author. Each section now has its own “Max Authors” setting.
Addresses fields. It’s now possible to create custom Addresses fields and attach them wherever you need to manage nested addresses.
Inline entry type and field creation. It’s now possible to create a section, its entry types, and custom fields, all in one combined workflow, drastically speeding up content modeling.
Administration and development
Lazy eager-loading. Eager-loading nested elements couldn’t be easier in Craft 5. Just add .eagerly() to your nested element queries, and Craft will take it from there.
Element partial templates. Create partial templates for your entry types, and render collections of elements in one go by calling elements.render() (or a single element with element.render()).
Reusable filesystems. Volumes now have a “Subpath” setting, and can now share filesystems with other volumes, so long as they each have a unique subpath.
Field type icons. Field types now provide an icon, making them easier to recognize within the Fields index page and field layout designers.
PHP 8.2. Craft 5 requires PHP 8.2, giving plugin developers the ability to take advantage of several language improvements since 8.0.
utf8mb4. MySQL installs now use the utf8mb4 character encoding by default, bringing full emoji support to every corner of the system.
Content JSON column. Most custom field content is stored in a central JSON column now, solving MySQL table size limitations.
So much more
See the 5.0.0-beta.1 release on GitHub for the full release notes.
Our “Europa” demo site has been updated for Craft 5, taking full advantage of the new authoring and content modeling features, so check that out if you’d like to get a feel for the update without getting your hands dirty.
If you’re ready to dive in, follow the installation instructions or upgrade instructions.
Have plugins that need to be updated? Our plugin upgrade guide has everything you’ll need to know.
We’ll be updating each of our plugins for Craft 5 in the following weeks, and we expect to launch Craft 5.0.0 (stable) in late March.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Craft 5 Alpha, and for all the developers who have already released Craft 5-compatible plugins!