Drupal 12 or Drupal 11 — upgrade now or wait?
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Drupal 10 reaches end of life on 9 December 2026. Drupal 12 is planned for the same week. Our recommendation for Drupal 10 site owners is to start the Drupal 11 upgrade now instead of building the whole plan around a new release.
Release week leaves no room for discovery
As of 16 September, the official Drupal release schedule (opens in a new tab) places Drupal 12 in the week of 7 December. Drupal 10 reaches end of life on 9 December. A planned release date does not promise that every module your site needs will be ready that day.
Waiting until December to attempt an upgrade combines two problems: evaluating a new major version and dealing with the end of support for the existing one. Drupal 11 is already available for a trial upgrade.
Our Drupal 10 end-of-life article covers the readiness checks. This article addresses the decision that follows: which version should you plan the next piece of work around?
Drupal 11 has a useful life beyond December
The Drupal team's platform requirements announcement (opens in a new tab) says Drupal 11 support will continue at least until Drupal 13, currently expected in mid-to-late 2028. Staying supported still requires installing subsequent Drupal 11 updates.
An autumn upgrade to Drupal 11 therefore does not become wasted work in December. Removing deprecated code, checking dependencies and testing essential journeys also prepares the site for the next major upgrade. That later upgrade will still require work, but there should be fewer unknowns to discover again.
WebPro recommends treating these as two decisions: getting the current site onto a supported version in time, and choosing when to adopt the next major version. They do not need to happen on the same day.
A booking form can decide the schedule
Consider a hypothetical Drupal 10 business website with a custom booking form that sends data to another system. After an upgrade, the homepage looks fine, but confirming a booking fails. The site is broken for its customers even though the administration screen reports a newer version.
The form's dependencies, integration and end-to-end tests determine whether this site is ready. The existence of a newer Drupal core release does not answer that question.
Before launch, we would test successful bookings and error handling, the editor's workflow, and keyboard and mobile use in staging. Test data must be suitable for that environment, and trial bookings must not trigger real customer notifications. Restoring a backup also needs a rehearsal.
When does Drupal 12 make sense?
For a site already running a supported Drupal 11 version, the Drupal 12 release is an opportunity to evaluate an upgrade in staging. It is not an automatic deadline to move. Schedule the change when the necessary modules, custom code and hosting are ready.
Drupal 12 requires PHP 8.5. Ask the hosting provider about support in your actual environment; a general claim that the hosting “supports Drupal” is insufficient. A prerelease can help investigate compatibility. A production plan needs a stable release and completed tests.
A new website due to launch in 2027 is also a reasonable candidate for a Drupal 12 assessment. Its planning constraints differ from those of a working Drupal 10 site with less than three months of support remaining.
For a Drupal 10 site, start with dependency checks and a Drupal 11 trial upgrade now. Through WebPro's Drupal migration service, we can identify blockers, agree which user journeys need tests and plan a safe release date.
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