Joomla! has great plans for the future of the project. Below is a generalised idea of the features desired for future releases and a highlight of in progress activity. When writing a revised roadmap we started by determining what we hoped to accomplish.
Timeframes of releases and semantic versions
With the development strategy published on 25 April 2014, one of the key features is maintaining long-term stability and backwards compatibility while also beginning to follow a semantic versioning approach to releases. The other aspect of timeframes was previously identified as a problem with the old release cycle. This ties in closely to the version numbers and release dates. By changing the releases to a somewhat standardised semantic version numbering and increasing the number of releases we will be able to stop the rush to include bugs and improvements in a release. Ideally the goal is to minimise the amount of items to be included in each release but also offer a more frequent release cycle.
Important to keep in mind: These releases are considered minor releases and none of them are to break backwards compatibility. Any features determined to break backwards compatibility will be moved to the next major release, presently Joomla! 5.x.
Please remember all dates are tentative and proposed focus for each release subject to modification.
Joomla!
Teams
Development for the Joomla! CMS is primarily lead by two teams within the Production Department.
CMS Release Team
The Release Team is responsible for quality assurance testing of the CMS and for planning, coordinating, and distributing all releases. The release lead for each minor release is a member of this team and acts as the primary decision maker when it comes to the release.
CMS Maintenance Team
The Maintenance Team is responsible for reviewing all proposed patches for the CMS, providing feedback on the proposed patch and making decisions regarding whether a patch is merged into the code base.
Joomla! 3.x
Joomla! 3.x is the currently supported major release series of the CMS.
| Development Status | |
|---|---|
| Current Release | 3.10.11 |
| Upcoming Release | N/A |
| Release Date of Series | September 27, 2012 |
| End of Support for 3.x | August 17, 2023 |
| Download Joomla! 3 | |
A full explanation of supported releases can be found under the heading, 4.3 Supported releases on the Joomla! Development Strategy document.
Joomla! 3.10
In preparation for Joomla! 4.x, Joomla! 3.10 is primarily a release containing backports of API changes from the 4.x to help ease the transition to the next major release for the community.
Schedule
| 3.10.11 | 16 August 2022 |
Release Lead
The release lead for Joomla! 3.10 is Tobias Zulauf.
Main Features
The following are the primary features introduced to Joomla! 3.10.
Proposed Features
This release does not accept any more features at this point other than intended for the pre upgrade checker and backports of 4.x features to improve compatibility.
Accepted Features
See the list of new features on GitHub.
Pull Requests Requiring Documentation
Some pull requests are merged before the documentation is written, a list of those pull requests can be found on GitHub. Each new feature should be documented on the documentation wiki by the developers involved to provide all information to users as well as helping 3rd party developers to integrate a feature to their extensions. Each page should have the following code inserted at the end: [[Category:Joomla! 3.10]]
Joomla! 4.x
Joomla! 4.x is the currently supported major release series of the CMS.
| Development Status | |
|---|---|
| Current Release | 4.2.9 |
| Upcoming Release | 4.3.0 |
| Release Date of Series | 17 August 2021 |
| End of Support for 4.x | n/a |
| Download Joomla! 4 | |
Joomla! 4.2
Joomla! 4.2 is the current supported release of the 4.x series. This is the third minor version release of the 4.x series and introduce new functionality.
Schedule
| 4.2.9 | 14 March 2023 |
| 4.3.0-rc1 | 21 March 2023 |
| 4.3.0 | 18 April 2023 |
Release Lead
The release leads for Joomla! 4.2 are Franciska Perisa & Roland Dalmulder.
Release Manager
The release leads for Joomla! 4.3 are Shirielle Williams & Olivier Buisard.
Main Features
The following are the primary features introduced to Joomla! 4.2.
- Keyboard Shortcuts With the new keyboard shortcuts, you can save time and become more productive.
- Multi-factor Authentication Manage multiple authentication methods to log in
- And much more!
Accepted Features
See the list of new features on GitHub.
Pull Requests Requiring Documentation
Some pull requests are merged before the documentation is written, a list of those pull requests can be found on GitHub. Each new feature should be documented on the documentation wiki by the developers involved to provide all information to users as well as helping 3rd party developers to integrate a feature to their extensions. Each page should have the following code inserted at the end: [[Category:Joomla! 4.x]] where the x is replaced with the version.2.9
Documentation Help Screens
The documentation help screens are based on a full major release series. As such, all of the help screens will require updates for Joomla! 4.0. In addition to the required updates, there is an idea proposal for a potential GSoC project to work on a new system to manage the screenshots; even if the project does not happen as part of GSoC the effort will continue otherwise.
Joomla! Framework
Teams
Development for the Joomla! Framework is steered by the Framework Working Group as part of the Production Department.
Joomla! Framework 1.x
Joomla! Framework 1.x is the supported major release series of the Framework.
| Development Status | |
|---|---|
| End of Support for 1.x | Same time as Joomla! CMS 3.x |
Joomla! Framework 2.x
Joomla! Framework 2.x is the current major version of the Joomla! Framework and is the backbone of the Joomla! CMS. This release will introduce new library packages, raise the minimum supported PHP version to PHP 7, and remove previously deprecated functionality.
Joomla! Framework 2.0
Joomla! Framework 2.0 is the first release of the next Joomla! Framework major release series.
Schedule
Backward Compatibility Breaks
The Framework 2.0 release has backward compatibility breaks as required to improve each package's structure and to adopt to PHP community standards. An upgrade guide will be available for each package documenting each break and these guides will be integrated into the Joomla! Framework website.
In addition to API upgrades, the following packages have been deprecated and will not have a Framework 2.0 release:
- Cache
- Compat
- Date
- Form
- Image
- LDAP
- Log
- OpenStreetMap
Main Features
The following are new features in the Framework 2.0 release.
- New Renderer package providing support for rendering templates with many popular PHP libraries (including Twig, Mustache, and Blade)
- New Console package for building command line applications
- New Preload package for managing HTTP/2 resources
- OpenSSL encryption support in the Crypt package
- Refactored Database package structure, including full support for prepared statements
- Refactored HTTP package providing support for the PSR-18 HTTP client interface
- Refactored Keychain package to use the Crypt package
- Refactored Router package
- Refactored Session package
- Restructured Test package to support database related integration tests
In Development or Proposed Features
The following features are presently in development.
- New Entities package providing an Active Record based database integration
- Renderer support in the Profiler package
- PSR-7 support in the URI package