Every major Drupal release has a Marie Kondo moment, and Drupal 12 is holding up nine core modules and three themes and asking, very politely, whether they still spark joy. They didn't make the cut. The good news is the beta is finally here, so you can find out what your site depends on before December instead of during a very stressful Friday deploy.

Beta One Arrives, Fashionably Late

Drupal core release managers tagged Drupal 12.0.0-beta1 on September 30, 2026, after the planned mid-September beta week came and went without a tag. It's aimed at site owners and module and theme authors who need to test compatibility and upgrade paths. It's a beta, so keep it off production, however tempting that looks.

The new floor is PHP 8.5, with database minimums of MySQL 8.0, MariaDB 10.11, SQLite 3.45 (with json1) and PostgreSQL 19. The default password hashing moves from bcrypt to Argon2id, and hosts without Argon2 support can switch back to bcrypt. Ban, Contact, Field Layout, History, Search, Settings Tray, Shortcut, Telephone and Toolbar leave core, along with the Claro, Olivero and Stable 9 themes. Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI are gone too, and the stable release is targeted for the week of December 7, 2026.

Your Upgrade Path Has a Bouncer

Here's the detail that will catch people out: Drupal 12's update system refuses to upgrade sites running Drupal 11.2 or earlier, because update functions added before 11.3.0 have been removed. You'll need to reach 11.4 (or 11.5 once it's out) first. If you skipped a few minor releases, the version you're on now matters a lot more than it did last week.

Most people will focus on the module removals, but the bigger to-do list is under the hood. PHPUnit jumps to 12.5, Guzzle to 8.0, htmx from 2.0 to 4.0, Node.js has a minimum of 24, and Backbone and Underscore are retired. Any custom module or theme that leaned on those quietly has some homework, and the Contact form your marketing team has used since 2014 now needs a contributed replacement or a plan.

Drupal 12 is leaner, faster-moving and more secure by default. It also expects you to show up with your house in order, so start your dependency audit now and December is just another release.

If you're not sure whether your site is two hops or five away from Drupal 12, let's map your upgrade path together before the stable release turns "we should look at that" into a deadline.

Source: The DropTimes