Laravel 12: new starter kits and a smaller upgrade surface
Released on 24 February 2025, Laravel 12 focused on dependency upgrades, new starter kits, and keeping the yearly upgrade path lightweight.
Laravel 12 is intentionally restrained. Instead of turning the annual release into a framework-wide reset, the team used it to keep the platform current while minimizing migration cost for existing applications.
The defining changes are the new React, Svelte, Vue, and Livewire starter kits, all built around newer frontend defaults, plus WorkOS AuthKit variants that add social login, passkeys, SSO, and broader production-ready auth flows. Laravel also formally positioned Breeze and Jetstream as legacy starter paths by stopping further updates to them.
That makes Laravel 12 a maintenance release in the best sense. Teams get a more modern starting point and fresher dependencies, while most existing apps can upgrade with little or no application code churn.