PHP 8.5 Release Overview: New Features, Compatibility, and Upgrade Guidance

PHP 8.5, the next major version of the PHP language, is scheduled for a formal release in November 2025. After release it will receive two years of active support (until 2027‑12‑31) and four years of security support (until 2029‑12‑31).

Release Date

According to the official PHP release policy, PHP 8.5 is expected in November 2025, though the team may launch a few days earlier, as happened with PHP 8.4.

Key New Feature: curl_multi_get_handles

The Curl extension adds a new function curl_multi_get_handles that returns an array of all CurlHandle objects associated with a given CurlMultiHandle object.

Feature Details

$cm = curl_multi_init();
curl_multi_get_handles($cm); // returns empty array

$ch1 = curl_init('https://example.com/foo');
$ch2 = curl_init('https://example.com/bar');

curl_multi_add_handle($cm, $ch1);
curl_multi_add_handle($cm, $ch2);

curl_multi_get_handles($cm); // returns [$ch1, $ch2]

This addition completes the existing set of multi‑handle operations, removing the need for developers to manually track CurlHandle objects or use a WeakMap for that purpose.

Function Signature

function curl_multi_get_handles(CurlMultiHandle $multi_handle): array {}

Backward Compatibility

Unless an application already defines its own curl_multi_get_handles function, the new feature introduces no backward‑compatibility issues.

Other Anticipated Improvements

Performance optimizations continuing the trend of each PHP 8.x release.

Enhancements to the type system, potentially adding new type‑related features.

Security improvements as PHP places increasing emphasis on safety.

Additional syntactic sugar similar to named parameters (PHP 8.0) and enums (PHP 8.1).

Upgrade Recommendations

Validate compatibility in a development or testing environment before production rollout.

Pay attention to deprecation notices in the current version, as they are usually removed in the next major release.

If upgrading from older versions (e.g., PHP 7.x), consider an intermediate step to PHP 8.1 or 8.4.

Monitor official PHP release notes for the complete change list.

PHP Version Support Status

With PHP 8.5’s arrival, older versions will lose support:

PHP 8.0 reached end‑of‑life in November 2023.

PHP 7.4 and earlier have been unsupported for years.

Major services and SDKs (e.g., AWS SDK) have already dropped support for these legacy versions, making migration to a supported PHP release increasingly important.

Conclusion

PHP 8.5 will continue modernizing the language in 2025. While the full feature list is still pending, the inclusion of curl_multi_get_handles demonstrates the PHP team’s focus on developer experience. As the release date approaches, more features will be announced, and the community should stay informed to ensure a smooth upgrade.