About me

Usability group, Migration subsystem, Security team

Follow along

• https://slides.benjifisher.info/ (GitLab Pages)

Release dates

• The first beta was released 2026-09-30.
• That was 2 weeks late.
• There may be a second beta release.
• A release candidate (RC) should be available the week of November 9.
• The full release (12.0.0) is scheduled the week of December 7.
• Drupal core release schedule - Current development cycle

What about Drupal 10 and 11?

• Drupal 10.6, 11.3 are EOL when Drupal 12 is released.
• I am reviewing a pull request: update to 11.4 from 10.6
• Drupal 11.4 enters security-only phase (no new features, only critical bug fixes).
• Drupal 11.5.0 will be released along with 12.0.0.

Change records

• Read the release notes! (at least one person on your team)
• Change records for Drupal core
• I count 49 as of this writing.

Drupal core is smaller - modules

• 9 modules are moved to contrib, including
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Telephone
  • Toolbar
• The Migrate API remains, but Migrate Drupal [UI] are removed.

Drupal core is smaller - themes

• 3 themes are moved to contrib:
  • Claro
  • Olivero
  • Stable 9
• Default Admin (based on Gin) is the default admin theme.

Drupal core vs. Drupal CMS

• Drupal core is more of a framework.
• New users are expected to install Drupal CMS
• Drupal core installs with
  • no content types
  • no front-end theme (just Default Admin)

Drupal CLI

• Drush is on its way out, to be replaced by Drupal CLI and extensions.

$ vendor/bin/dr 
Drupal 12.0-dev

...

Available commands:
  completion      Dump the shell completion script
  generate-theme  Generates a new theme based on latest default markup.
  help            Display help for a command
  install         Install Drupal using an install profile or recipe.
  list            List commands
  quick-start     Installs a Drupal site and starts a web server for local testing or development.
  server          Starts up a webserver for a site.
 cache
  cache:rebuild   [cr|rebuild] Rebuild all caches.

Drupal development

• Core developers focus on the framework.
  • Several core developers also maintain the now-contrib modules.
• Contrib modules are developed faster without the extra level of review.
  • Who enforces the Core gates?
• Automated tests run faster (and cheaper) since there are fewer of them.
• The security team still coordinates all modules that opt in.

Drupal for new users

• New users get recipes with vetted modules.
  • Who vets the recipes?
• How effective is the marketing for Drupal CMS and site templates?
  • I have not been following this.

References

• Drupal 12.0.0-beta1
• Drupal core release schedule - Current development cycle
• Change records for Drupal core
• Core gates
• site templates
• Benji’s slide decks: https://slides.benjifisher.info/

Copyleft

This slide deck by Benji Fisher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://gitlab.com/benjifisher/slide-decks.