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Under the ambitious Starshot roadmap, Drupal 11, the latest version of Drupal, is launched and showcases a unique set of enhancements and features that offer power to developers, designers, and website architects. Drupal 11 features revolve around improvements for its performance, admin UX, tech stack modernization, development tools, security and content workflows.
In Drupal 11, we witness major enhancements across five key areas:
Drupal 11 updates bring a ton of power into the hands of business owners and developers alike. With impact falling on all cohorts of the organization, these Drupal 11 enhancements are set to streamline regular operations with ease and future-proof business with scale. Below, we have curated a comprehensive guide for Drupal development companies to understand and learn the new features of Drupal 11 to steer clear of the crowd and trends that are shaping Drupal development services.
Let’s dive in.
Drupal 11 is an open-source content management system (CMS) designed for building and managing dynamic, highly customizable websites and digital experiences. Known for its flexibility, robust security, and scalability, it’s widely used for complex, content-heavy sites, from small blogs to large-scale enterprise applications.
Key Features:
This latest release features new tools in Drupal 11, modernized themes, improved performance, and updated dependencies like PHP 8.3+ and Symfony 7.
With Drupal 11, a brand new navigation module comes into play. This experimental module is redesigned to be left-aligned, as a single collapsible vertical admin menu. This new sidebar can be expanded, collapsed and is custom-fitted with necessary navigation blocks, using the Layout Builder. This improves deep menu navigation to a great extent, offering a clean and intuitive interface on both desktop and mobile devices. For example, custom blocks such as Content Creation help developers and site builders tailor admin access.
With future enhancements, Drupal is also thinking about introducing a dynamic Top Bar and keyboard/mouse navigation, bringing huge improvements to the overall UI.
In Drupal 11, creating, managing and reusing fields is now more intuitive and convenient. Undergoing a major remodeling, the Field UI now offers visually-rich elements such as logically grouped fields with clean and new-age icons, leaner configuration flow and a drag-and-drop ordering system, which makes content modeling much easier.
With the latest version of Drupal, users can now witness Claro as the default admin theme. Chosen for its modern, powerful and accessible interface, Claro is proven to improve platform usability for both content editors and administrators.
Drupal 11 introduces the Single-Directory Components, a new and robust feature that allows developers to gather and bundle all related files of various formats (CSS, JavaScript, Twig templates, etc.) under a single directory. This method organizes required assets under one roof and streamlines the reusability, collaboration and management of each component. All elements required to render a component are already available within the directory. For developers, this can be crucially beneficial, as it offers:
Drupal 11 launched the all-new Drupal Recipes APIs that let developers automate installation and configuration by packaging them into small, manageable and installable components. Elements like user roles, settings, content categories, etc., can be merged and applied as an installation in one go. This enables rapid site-building and allows for greater collaboration as recipes can be mixed with other recipes, reinstalled or uninstalled at once. With Drupal 11 Recipes, users can:
Recipes are also crucial for the Drupal Starshot roadmap, which aims to offer a quickstart method to its users for new websites, with advanced functionality for common use cases.
With Drupal 11, site builders and admins now have access to the Project Browser, which allows them to discover and install modules via Drupal’s own UI while Composer works in the background. This user-intuitive method ensures the installations are accurate and consistent, where lower barriers are maintained for the non-tech teams, all while keeping a modern development approach. Also, with the removal of manual module and theme support from Drupal core, Composer has been assigned as the default and reliable option for updates and extension management.
Drupal 11 now natively supports decoupled menus via Linkset endpoints, enabling frontend frameworks like React or Vue to fetch menu data without custom APIs.
Drupal 11’s JavaScript editor, CKEditor 5, now comes fully integrated with the CMS platform. It offers features such as:
By offering these powerful features, Drupal 11 has strategically removed all the hassle site builders and developers feel when they are working with content, allowing authors to create rich content in fewer manual steps.
With Drupal 11 updates, the Workspaces module is now redefined, becoming more stable and allowing users to create and utilize multiple content environments, such as draft, staging, live, etc. Users can make use of the admin UI and facilitate the quick and free flow of the content pipeline, facilitating content staging and publishing workflows.
The platform also offers granular block management that helps site builders create, manage and roll back previous versions with controlled visibility on the user and the status.
Drupal 11 updates introduce the new Access Policy APIs that allow user permissions based on content and contextual conditions, way beyond user roles. The super-admin account can also be disabled for improved security. With the Drupal security updates, the platform now holds more power within the system.
Drupal 11 improvements include an enhanced content editor with a robust and powerful media library. Editors are now able to segment assets with custom tags, enabling faster search and retrieval through an improved interface. This not only reduces the time spent on file retrieval but also streamlines the asset management workflows.
Drupal 11 also comes with native support for Web3 images, helping editors deliver high-quality images in compact-size files. With lazy loading and BigPipe multithreading, load time for images is now reduced significantly. This allows for a quicker page load speed, better website performance and improved Core Web Vitals, impacting SEO performance and user experience in totality.
With Drupal 11, content moderation and revision tracking for taxonomy terms are enabled, allowing improved control over content categorization.
Drupal 11 updates come with the new upgrade to the existing PHP framework from Symfony 6 to Symfony 7. This provides:
Drupal core now requires at least PHP 8.3, boosting processing speeds. Additionally, Drupal is fully tested and optimized for MySQL 8, ensuring improved reliability and scalability.
Drupal 11 reduces reliance on jQuery, favoring modern ES6 JavaScript, and adopts Twig 3, improving frontend performance and aligning with modern development practices.
Drupal 11 boosts performance through:
Drupal 11 now includes an Announcements Feed on the admin dashboard by default. Site owners receive updates from drupal.org, enhancing awareness of releases, advisories, and news.
With Drupal 10 expected to reach end-of-life in late 2026, there’s still time for Drupal developers to plan the upgrade. If you’re already on Drupal 10.3, you’re well on your way. Aside from some deprecated code, Drupal 10.3 is functionally almost identical to Drupal 11.
However, to ensure a smooth upgrade, follow these key steps:
In short, proactive preparation now will ensure your upgrade is seamless. Don’t delay, get ahead while the transition is still low-risk and straightforward.
Drupal 11 isn’t just a version upgrade but a glimpse into the future of enterprise-grade digital experiences businesses can offer. As the web evolves, so does Drupal’s commitment to innovation, flexibility, and community-driven development.
Here’s what the road ahead looks like for Drupal 11 and beyond:
Drupal 11 is for sure a game-changer: it modernizes the stack, streamlines development, enhances UX and supports future-proof workflows. Integration of SDCs, Recipes, Composer integration, and enhanced admin tools mark a pivotal shift toward a more intuitive, efficient CMS.
That said, module compatibility is key and auditing your tech stack before upgrading is essential. With careful planning, the transition to Drupal 11 offers major long-term gains.
Here is where we can help you!
Unified Infotech is a leading Drupal development services partner, with a team of expert developers and strategists to guide the way. Our team is determined to provide the best possible experience in your Drupal migration with high-performing, future-ready solutions. Whether you’re planning a migration, need help optimizing your existing Drupal site, want to hire Drupal developers for your offshore requirements or want to unlock the full potential of Drupal 11, Unified Infotech is your trusted partner for scalable, secure, and user-centric web solutions.
"Tridibesh Sen, Technology Lead for PHP and WordPress, creates custom CMS solutions, plugins, and themes. He ensures site performance, security, and responsiveness, delivering optimized, SEO-friendly platforms tailored for client branding and user engagement.”
Drupal 11 enhances performance through better caching strategies, optimized database queries, reduced reliance on jQuery in favor of modern JavaScript, and full compatibility with PHP 8.3 and Symfony 7. At Unified Infotech, we leverage these enhancements to build faster, more scalable websites that meet modern performance benchmarks.
Upgrading from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 is relatively straightforward, especially if you're using Composer. Start by checking your contributed modules for compatibility, update your dependencies via Composer, and follow the official Drupal upgrade guide. Contact Unified Infotech and gain insights to streamline this process with minimal downtime and ensure a seamless migration.
While many popular modules have been updated to support Drupal 11, not all contributed modules are immediately compatible. It's essential to audit your module list and check each one’s Drupal 11 readiness.
Drupal 11 offers a more intuitive admin experience, powerful content staging tools, enhanced security, and modern development workflows. These benefits translate into faster time to market, better editor usability, and future-proof architecture.
With faster page rendering, lazy loading of assets, and the ability to use WebP images, Drupal 11 ensures a smoother mobile experience. Additionally, the redesigned admin UI and responsive sidebar navigation make mobile content editing far more accessible, a big win for editors on the go.
In many cases, yes, especially if they follow modern coding standards. However, some custom modules may need adjustments due to deprecated APIs or Symfony 7 updates. Unified Infotech can perform code audits and make necessary updates to ensure your custom modules remain fully functional in Drupal 11.
Drupal 11 is preparing to support automatic core updates, initially for patch releases and eventually for contributed modules. Until then, updates are managed via Composer.
The Drupal community is actively developing more powerful recipe capabilities, enhanced decoupled support, and improved user onboarding under the Project Starshot initiative. With each release, Drupal 11 aims to become more user-friendly, intuitive and accessible.
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