Dot All 2025: What’s next for Craft CMS?

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Our Head of Development headed down to sunny Lisbon for Dot All 2025; the official three-day conference for Craft’s increasingly international community. Here are the key takeaways for clients, agencies and developers.

Craft continues to be the best CMS for your business

The headline? Craft 6 is coming, as announced by CEO Brandon Kelly, and it’s packed with new features that many enterprise users have been waiting for.

• Content releases: allow scheduling the publishing of content changes across multiple entries, making it possible for authors to prep edits site-wide and release them all in one go
• A built-in approval process: can now require editor sign-off before changes go live, with an activity log keeping track of everything for audit purposes
• Laravel framework: Craft 6 will be built on Laravel; a more widely used PHP framework. That means it’ll be easier to find developers familiar with the tech and easier to support projects in the long term
• Backward compatibility: rewriting existing code has almost been entirely negated, thanks to an official adaptor that will let Craft 5 code continue to run as-is

Pixel & Tonic - the company behind Craft CMS - continues to grow steadily, now with 17 full-time staff across most time zones. With dedicated developer support from Oli and Tommy, Craft is increasingly looking like a solid long-term bet.

And speaking of long-term, Craft 5 will become a long-term support release, meaning it’ll receive security updates for at least the next five years. That gives teams plenty of time to plan upgrades without stress.

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Craft 6 is scheduled for release late next year. Given the scale of the framework change, that timeline makes sense, and the decision to fully port the system was always going to be the best option in the long run.

In the meantime, Craft 5 isn’t standing still. The upcoming 5.9 release will include several author experience improvements, including the long-requested ability to split content sections in the top-level navigation, making the control panel easier and more intuitive to use.

Craft Partner programme improvements & sales support

Pixel & Tonic’s continued growth, both in headcount and financially, was encouraging. For the first time, CMS licences now account for less than half of their annual revenue, which has allowed for greater investment in areas like the Partner Programme - new listing pages are launching soon, with more improvements teased for next year.

On the sales side, Craft’s ongoing commitment to accessibility was another standout. The rewritten control panel will be WCAG 2.2 compliant, helping ensure that admin areas of the CMS are as inclusive as the frontend. Particularly in Europe, where accessibility legislation is tightening, this is a real plus.

Sr. Accessibility Engineer, Lupe, even shared a demo of the image editor’s improved keyboard controls, showing just how seriously accessibility is being taken by the team at Craft CMS.

And when it comes to helping agencies demonstrate value to clients, Developer Relations Engineer Trav’s ‘What’s New’ articles remain a go-to resource. They offer clear, client-friendly summaries of each minor release – making it easier to highlight the benefits of ongoing support and maintenance.

Laravel full port confirmed

Anticipation had been building for how Craft would approach the long-promised Laravel rewrite, and the “full port” announcement was a welcome surprise.

After chatting with Brandon at Tuesday’s workshop it’s clear: this is the right long-term approach. With Craft becoming just part of your wider application, rather than the whole application itself, developers will be able to integrate it more easily and tap into modern ecosystems.

Other developer highlights:

• $9 million has now been paid out to plugin developers since the store’s launch, a solid sign of a thriving ecosystem.
• A new front-end system built on the open-source Lion component library will make it easier for service providers to add custom UI elements within the control panel.
• And yes… the long-awaited dark mode is finally coming.

Where next?

One again we’re coming away from Dot All with a bunch of exciting updates on the roadmap. With plenty of time to prepare for Craft 6, and continued support for Craft 5, it’s a great time to be part of the Craft CMS ecosystem.

As the UK’s leading Craft CMS agency, we’ve helped brands like Harrison Spinks expand and replatformed Taylors – delivering seamless, scalable, and high-performing solutions.

So if you’ve got questions about what’s on the horizon, or you’d like support planning your next move with Craft CMS, let’s talk.

And finally, a big thanks to Pixel & Tonic – and to organiser Leah in particular – for organising another brilliant event. We’re already looking forward to the next one!