Laravel 12 was released on February 24, 2025, continuing the improvements of version 11. More than a major overhaul, it is a “maintenance release” whose primary goals are updating upstream dependencies and introducing new starter kits. The good news for teams is that most applications can upgrade without any code changes. Below we review the most important changes.

New Starter Kits

The most tangible change in Laravel 12 is a fresh set of starter kits for modern front-end frameworks. They replace the older Laravel Breeze and Jetstream, and offer the option of using WorkOS AuthKit for user authentication:

• React Starter Kit: includes Inertia.js, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn components.
• Vue Starter Kit: includes Inertia.js, Vue 3, TypeScript, and shadcn-vue.
• Livewire Starter Kit: includes Livewire 3, TypeScript, Tailwind, and Flux UI components.

Creating a project with your chosen starter kit is straightforward:

laravel new my-app
# then, during installation, choose the React, Vue, or Livewire starter kit

Container Performance Improvements

Laravel 12 streamlines its dependency injection container to resolve services faster and use less memory. The result is faster boot times and better overall performance—especially noticeable in large-scale applications where many services are registered in the container.

Route Attributes Support

One notable feature is the ability to define routes using PHP 8 attributes placed directly above controller methods. You no longer need to define every route in separate route files, although the file-based approach is still fully supported.

use Illuminate\Routing\Attributes\Get;
use Illuminate\Routing\Attributes\Post;

class ProductController
{
    #[Get('/products', name: 'products.index')]
    public function index()
    {
        return Product::paginate();
    }

    #[Post('/products', name: 'products.store')]
    public function store(StoreProductRequest $request)
    {
        return Product::create($request->validated());
    }
}

Built-in Health Checks and Improved Job Batching

Laravel 12 introduces a built-in health check route, which is very handy for monitoring application status in containerized environments and orchestration tools like Kubernetes. Job batching in queues has also been strengthened, making group management of jobs more reliable—something especially important for compute-heavy platforms and trading systems.

System Requirements and Support Status

Laravel 12 still requires PHP 8.2 as the minimum version, so if you’re on PHP 8.2 or higher you’ll have no trouble upgrading. Since this release is mainly about dependency updates, upgrading from Laravel 11 to 12 typically requires no changes to application code.

Upgrade Path

To upgrade, update the framework package version in composer.json and run the update command:

composer require laravel/framework:^12.0 --update-with-dependencies
composer update
php artisan about

After upgrading, review the official Upgrade Guide and run your project’s automated tests to ensure third-party dependency compatibility.

Conclusion

Laravel 12 is an evolutionary, low-risk release focused on modernizing developer tooling, TypeScript-integrated front-end starter kits, and container performance. For teams building high-traffic applications or fast web platforms, the improved boot time and built-in health checks deliver real value. If you’re on version 11, the upgrade to 12 is usually quick and painless, and it’s worth doing in your project’s next maintenance cycle.