What's New in Laravel 12: A complete details about features and updates

Experts who want to build innovative, scalable, and successful web apps favor the Laravel framework. Better tools, clearer code, and faster execution are part of every Laravel feature upgrade. The biggest focuses of the Laravel 12 update are experience, security, and improvements. It delivers greater authentication, a more streamlined architecture, API tools, and better real-time capabilities.

By increasing performance, streamlining the development process, strengthening application security, and simplifying real-time data processing, Laravel 12’s latest features and improvements enable your development team to increase output and drive your business’ financial results.

In this blog, we’ll explore what’s new in Laravel 12. And how it boosts productivity for developers.

What’s new in Laravel? New features and updates

The latest iteration of Laravel has introduced some exciting additions that have improved the stability, effectiveness, and developer friendliness of the framework. Let's take a closer look at these features.

1.    Capability and performance

Apps can now run faster, accommodate more users, and handle heavier loads thanks to a number of improvements made by the Laravel 12 update. Its new caching mechanism is a huge improvement as it avoids backups and retrieves data much faster. Laravel 12 also simplifies cache management, ensuring that frequently used content loads instantly.

Features

•    Improved caching mechanism: Reduces server load and speeds up data retrieval.
•    Efficient memory management: Reduces memory usage when performing intensive data processing.
•    Support for high-traffic environments: Allows applications to scale vertically and horizontally without any bottlenecks.
•    Asynchronous task management: Helps manage background processes without compromising user experience.
•    Many improvements made in Laravel 12 ensure that your projects continue to work quickly and efficiently even as they grow to serve millions of users.

2.    Advanced Query Builder and NestedWhere()

Creating complex database queries is easy with Laravel 12. This will speed up the execution of your database queries and make them easier to interpret.
In previous versions, you had to wrap a lot of where() statements inside each other, resulting in messy and hard-to-read code.

Features

•    Complex query handling: To handle complex queries, your development team can insert WHERE clauses inside queries.
•    Simplified syntax: Reduces the need for raw SQL queries while maintaining Laravel's understandable and straightforward syntax.
•    Support for strict queries: Compatible with other advanced methods such as whereInStrict() and whereNotInStrict().

This helps streamline the process without compromising performance and is helpful in analytics or e-commerce platforms where complex data filtering is required.

In Laravel 11:

$products = DB::table(‘products’)
->where(‘status’, ‘active’)
->where(function ($query) {
$query->where(‘price’, ‘<‘, 1000)
->orWhere(‘discount’, ‘>’, 20);
})
->get();

In Laravel 12:

$products = DB::table(‘products’)
->where(‘status’, ‘active’)
->nestedWhere(‘price’, ‘<‘, 1000, ‘or’, ‘discount’, ‘>’, 30)
->get();

3.    AI-powered debugging assistant

Laravel 12’s feature enhancements make it easier to find and fix issues in your code. It comes with a brand new AI-powered tool that makes it easier to find issues and take immediate action. The new debug() tool eliminates the need for archaic methods like dd() or dump() by giving you intelligent, real-time help and guidance.

Features

•    Real-time code analysis: Continuously finds any errors in the code and provides timely feedback.
•    Contextual suggestions: Provides relevant answers based on the specific framework and coding environment.
•    Automatic error detection: As your software development team builds code, it detects logical and grammatical errors to help prevent problems early in the process.
•    Integration with development environments: Compatible with popular development environments.

Older methods like dd() and dump() have been replaced with the new debug() update, which helps peer review to identify critical issues to improve code quality and enhance the overall user experience.

The AI-powered debugging assistant looks at your code, finds issues, and even suggests fixes. By doing so, you can save time and avoid guessing about the problem.

In Laravel 11: dd($variable);
In Laravel 12: debug($variable)->suggest();

Related Blog: Django vs. Laravel: Which Framework Will Be the Right Choice In 2025?

4.    Enhanced Decision Injections

Laravel 12 has improved Dependency Injection (DI) to help with application architecture dependencies. These changes make it easier to manage dependencies and provide cleaner code visualizations.

Features

•    Automatic Dependency Resolution: By automatically injecting dependencies, it reduces boilerplate code.
•    Service Container Improvements: Provides robust methods for dynamically binding and resolving dependencies
•    Support for Applicable Services: It simplifies middleware and controller functionality by enabling the injection of services as acceptable objects.

Using improved dependency injection technologies, your development team can use robust and modular scripts to save time and cost of future upgrades and maintenance.

5.    HTTP Client Improvements

Laravel 12 enhances the capabilities of the HTTP client to enhance Laravel development with better error handling, API integration, and support for asynchronous requests. This makes it possible for businesses to build robust and reliable applications and handle API connections more efficiently.

Features

•    Asynchronous Request Handling: By allowing non-blocking API calls, this feature enables apps to handle multiple requests at once.
•    Improved Error Handling: Provides integrated methods for detecting and resolving HTTP issues.
•    Timeout and Retry: Businesses can create custom timeout periods and perform automatic retries for requests that fail.

This version of Laravel 12 improves reliability by collecting data from third-party providers and is ideal for SaaS apps that rely on external API connectors.

6.    API Development with GraphQL and Versioning

Now that Laravel 12 has built-in support for GraphQL, you can query for the exact data you need. Your website loads faster because there’s less information being sent back and forth. Instead of creating multiple separate queries (as with REST), you can use a single GraphQL query to get everything you want neatly packaged.

Additionally, managing multiple API versions is now easier. Manually adding version numbers to your website addresses (paths) used to be a messy task. Your API code remains clear due to its better structure.

Features

GraphQL integration enables clients to request specific data fields and reduce payload size through flexible API queries.

•    API Versions: API versioning makes it easier to maintain multiple API versions.
•    Advanced Request Handling: Improves data delivery performance, especially for mobile and online applications that require dynamic data.

Since it simplifies API responses and provides more reliable APIs to clients, this feature is ideal for businesses that offer API services to external development teams.

In Laravel 11:

Route::get('/api/v1/users', [UserController::class, 'index']);

In Laravel 12:

Route::apiVersion (1)->group (function ()
{ Route::get('users', [UserController::class, 'index']);
});

How does Laravel 12 Improve Application Performance?

• Laravel 12 is a great option for developers who want to create fast, scalable, and responsive applications because it significantly improves application speed.
• The addition of asynchronous caching techniques, which enable cache operations to run in the background without interfering with other processes, is the most notable enhancement.
• Another notable improvement is improving query execution. The Query Builder in Laravel 12 has been improved to better utilize database-specific functionality, reduce redundant calculations, and increase the speed of complex database queries.
• Modern PHP 8+ capabilities such as Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, which greatly speeds up code execution, are also included in Laravel 12. Laravel ensures that critical operations are executed much faster than ever before by precompiling frequently used code paths.
• Laravel has added intelligent queue and job management. Thanks to dynamic priorities and intelligent retry methods, critical background processes can now be prioritized over low-priority tasks, guaranteeing timely execution without the need for user intervention.

In fact, benchmarking by Kinsta showed that upgrading from PHP 8.2 to PHP 8.3 resulted in a ~38% increase in request throughput for Laravel applications—evidence of substantial performance gains.

How to Upgrade to Laravel 12?

To ensure that your application is compatible with the latest version, upgrading to Laravel 12 requires several steps. The steps are as follows:

Step 1: Verify Laravel 12 Requirements

Make sure your server meets the requirements for Laravel 12. Typically, these include:

•    PHP 8.1 or later
•    Composer 2.0 or later
•    Additional extensions, such as json, openssl, mbstring, etc.

Step 2: Back up your Program

Back up your entire application, including the database, before making any modifications. This ensures that in case of an error, you can roll back.

Step 3: Revisit Dependencies

To update the laravel/framework dependency to ~12.0, open your composer.json file. Additionally, look for any other dependencies that may need to be updated to work with Laravel 12.

Step 4: Perform a Composer Update

You can update your dependencies by running the following command.

This will install Laravel 12, and all other dependencies will be updated to their latest compatible versions.

Step 5: Look for Breaking Changes

For information about any breaking changes that may affect your application, see the Laravel 12 Upgrading Guide. Common places to look are:

•    Configuration documentation
•    Middleware
•    Beautiful models
•    Modifying blade templates and APIs

Step 6: Update Configuration Files

Laravel frequently modifies or adds new configuration options. Make the necessary changes after comparing your existing configuration files with a brand new Laravel 12 installation.

Step 7: Update Routes and Middleware

Update your middleware and routes to reflect any changes made to them in Laravel 12.

Step 8: Revise Tests

Make sure your tests are up to date to support Laravel 12 if you have any. This may involve changes to factories, test cases, and other configurations unique to the test.

Step 9: Start Seeders and Migrations

Make sure your database is up to date by running migrations and seeders if the database schema or seeders have changed.

Step 10: Evaluate your Program

Make sure everything works as it should by thoroughly testing your application. Areas that may have been affected by the changes should be given extra attention.

Final Thoughts

While Laravel 12 doesn’t deliver groundbreaking changes, it does bring significant improvements that improve developer experience, performance, and stability. This release focuses on improving development performance and smoothness with new authentication starter kits for React, Vue, and Livewire, improved string handling, and improved database migration. Developers can seamlessly migrate to Laravel 11 with a few key changes that provide a straight-forward upgrade path for existing Laravel 11 users. Laravel 12 provides a solid foundation for building modern online applications, whether you’re starting a new project or updating an old one. Hire a Laravel web development company to ensure your project runs smoothly and performs at its best if you want to get the most out of this release.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Laravel 12 Work with my Existing Laravel Packages?

There will be compatibility issues. It is important to review each package's documentation for compatibility with Laravel 12. Some packages may need to be updated or replaced.

How can I Ensure that my Upgrade to Laravel 12 goes Smoothly?

Back up your application, read the official upgrade guide, use Composer to update dependencies, fix breaking changes, migrate databases, clear caches, and perform extensive testing.

In what ways does Laravel 12 Enhance the Developer Experience?

Development runs more smoothly with improved command-line tools, more understandable error messages, and a more user-friendly syntax.