Drupal 12 has been "almost here" so many times this year it's starting to feel like a software industry version of Waiting for Godot — except Godot, in this case, is a stable release with a working Toolbar replacement.

The Second Window Also Closed

Drupal 12 originally aimed for a June 15, 2026 release. When core maintainers realized critical requirements wouldn't be finished in time, they pushed to a second window: the week of August 10. That date has now come and gone too, and the confirmed schedule has moved again — beta1 is targeted for the week of September 14, a release candidate for the week of November 9, and Drupal 12.0.0 itself for the week of December 7, 2026.

The holdup isn't mysterious: it's a punch list of unglamorous but essential work, including PHPUnit 12 support, a JavaScript import maps API, cleaner update-path database dumps, excluding test files from release packages, retiring the old Toolbar module, stabilizing Gin as the default admin theme, and migrating to ESLint 9. Core maintainers have been asking the community for help closing these out since the spring.

Why a Slipped Date Isn't the Real Story

Here's the thing seasoned Drupal shops already know: a delayed major release is a feature, not a bug, of how Drupal ships. Nobody wants a version 12.0 that breaks half the ecosystem's contrib modules because the team rushed Gin out the door before it was ready.

The more useful question for anyone running Drupal 10 or 11 right now isn't "when does 12 land" — it's "am I actually ready when it does." Deprecated modules, theme dependencies, and update paths have a way of surfacing as emergencies the week a major version ships, not months in advance when there's time to plan.

December is the new "soon." Act accordingly.

If your site is still leaning on the Toolbar module or an admin theme that hasn't been touched since Drupal 9, now's a good time to have that conversation with us before it becomes a scramble — reach out and we'll take a look.

Source: Drupal.org