What's new in Joomla 6?

Joomla 6.0 is the latest version of the popular content management system and was officially released on Oct. 14, 2025. This release brings a big step forward in terms of ease of use, stability and automation. For example, it is now possible to have Joomla updated automatically, so websites always stay up-to-date without manual intervention.

There is also an updated default template added: Cassiopeia Extended, a modern and more flexible version of the familiar Cassiopeia template. In addition, versioning has been completely revamped, making tracking and restoring previous versions of content now more extensive than before.

Joomla 6.0 introduces new field types that give developers even more freedom in building complex forms and content structures.

In total, Joomla 6.0 contains a whopping 276 tweaks: from new features to improvements and bug fixes. The result is a more future-proof CMS that is ready for the next phase of web development.

The end of Joomla 4

Keep in mind that as of Oct. 14, 2025, Joomla 4 is no longer supported. That means that this version will no longer receive security updates or bug fixes, increasing the risk of vulnerabilities. So it is wise to seriously consider switching to Joomla 5 or Joomla 6 now.

According to the official support schedule, Joomla 5 will receive both functional and security updates until Oct. 13, 2026, and then only security patches until Oct. 12, 2027.

Joomla 6 is supported longer: enhancements and security updates are released until Oct. 17, 2028, and only security support remains active until Oct. 16, 2029.

Updated system requirements

With the arrival of Joomla 6, the minimum system requirements have also been tightened. To take full advantage of the new features and improved security, PHP 8.3.0 is now the minimum required version. This increase ensures that Joomla 6 is better aligned with modern web standards and performs more efficiently on recent server environments. A full list of the new technical requirements can be found in the official documentation at manual.joomla.org

Automatic updates

One of the most talked about innovations in Joomla 6 is the introduction of automatic updates, a feature also added in version 5.4. This allows the CMS to update itself within smaller releases, such as from 6.0.0 to 6.0.1, without the administrator having to manually intervene.This makes maintenance easier and ensures that security patches are applied more quickly.

Still, some caution is in order. Those who use many third-party extensions are at greater risk of an update breaking something on the site. Based on years of experience with Joomla, I recommend disabling automatic updates and using the manual method, especially for complex sites. However, if you have a simple site without critical extensions or with only standard components, then the automatic update can actually be a useful tool to keep everything smoothly up-to-date.

You can read more about the automatic updates in my knowledge base article: Automatic Joomla updates (Joomla 5.4+)

Cassiopeia Extended

Cassiopeia Extended is a so-called Child template of the well-known Cassiopeia theme. Cassiopeia is the Joomla website template based on Bootstrap 5.

In the color settings you can now easily choose different colors for backgrounds, links and texts.

In the font settings tab, you can define the size of fonts.

Improved versioning

Joomla already had version control, which allowed previously saved versions of articles to be easily restored. In Joomla 6, this system is further enhanced. Now data from custom fields, tags and categories are also included in saved versions. This means that when restoring an older version, you restore not only the text, but also all associated field information completely.

New Custom fields

The note field

If you want to add additional text to the custom fields as an explanation or guidance for completing the fields, the note custom field is a new type you can use for this purpose.

When setting up this field you enter a header and content, among other things. You can also use different css classes such as alert-info, alert-warning, etc.

While filling in the fields you will see this as follows:

The number field

The number custom field can be used to show a number with your article.

You can set a Default value, as well as a Minimum and Maximum number and a step increment.
For the Minimum and Maximum number and Step increment, you can only choose whole numbers, but you can use decimals when entering and thus enter a number like "7.5."

There is also an option to format the number as a Currency, which is useful when you want to display the price for an item.
You can then also enter a Currency symbol (such as € or EUR), select the position of the symbol (Before or After) and the number of decimal places.

In this example, the number 7.5 is then displayed as €7.50;

Behavior plugin - Backward compatibility 6

If extensions are used that do not use the current Joomla coding standards, this plugin, if enabled, will provide backward compatibility from the previous main version, Joomla 5. So with this plugin, you can mitigate problems when upgrading from Joomla 5 to Joomla 6 and make the transition smoother.

In the previous version, Joomla already had such a plug-in, but it was mainly intended to make older extensions compatible with version 5 of the CMS.

CSS transitions in Atum and Cassiopeia

An effect of smooth transitions has now been added in the front-end template Cassiopeia and the back-end template Atum. Thanks to these CSS transitions, changes on the page, such as loading new content or switching between elements, flow more smoothly and the user experience looks sleeker and more modern. If you want to add this to your own template as well, you can add this code to your template's (custom) CSS file.

@media screen and (prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference) {
@view-transition {
navigation: auto;
}
}

Activation email users.

Users who are manually activated receive an email notification stating that their account has been activated. In addition, it is possible to manually send a reminder email even if the account is already active, for example in case the user has not signed up after a certain period of time. This button can be found when viewing in the user data.

The com_users.registration.user.admin_activated e-mail template is used for these messages.

Batch delete tags

In the item summary view, there is a batch action that allows one tag from the tag list to be added to the selected items. This update adds the ability to remove or detach a tag from the selected articles as well. In addition, batch processing has been extended to categories, contacts and news feeds.

Custom CSS Classes for images in TinyMCE

Other customizations

Special articles now share the same view as the Article Manager view.
Thumbnails in the Media Manager are now available for any file type.
Caching of language files has been added.
Code has been cleaned up and dependencies updated.
Content editing has been improved with TinyMCE 8.0.1.

Are you ready to transfer your website to Joomla 6 yet? Contact me if you need help.