Laravel 11 to 12: the official estimate is 5 minutes. Here’s what takes longer

Laravel 11’s security fixes ended on March 12, 2026. Laravel 12’s end on February 24, 2027, so stopping there gives you a few months before the same conversation comes round again. Our Laravel 11 end-of-life guide makes the case for going straight to 13.

The changes below apply either way, because they arrive at version 12 and carry on into 13. The only reason to stop at 12 is a hard block on PHP 8.2 or a package with no Laravel 13 release. Our package matrix lists the lines that stop at 12.

The official guide lists three dependencies:

"laravel/framework": "^12.0",
"phpunit/phpunit": "^11.0",
"pestphp/pest": "^3.0"

If Composer refuses, composer why-not laravel/framework ^12.0 shows which package is responsible. Update blocking packages on your Laravel 11 branch and release them first, where you can. That way a package’s own breaking changes don’t get mixed up with the framework’s.

The guide rates this low impact, and for many applications it is. We check it first because it’s the change most likely to produce a wrong number with no error. Laravel 11 allowed Carbon 2 or 3. Laravel 12 allows only 3, so find out where you are:

composer show nesbot/carbon | grep versions

If you’re already on Carbon 3, this step is done. If you’re on 2, the concern is diffInDays(), diffInHours() and the rest of that family. As the Laravel 11 guide warns, they now return floats and can be negative, showing direction. A subscription that was “3 days” overdue might now be -3.25. Search for diffIn and pay most attention to invoices, overdue notices, SLA timers, report buckets and anything stored in an integer column. Then write a test for each one that matters before you upgrade, so you can compare the results afterwards.

The HasUuids trait now creates version 7 UUIDs. Existing rows don’t change, and most applications are unaffected. Look harder if any of these apply:

• A validation rule, database check or regular expression expects a particular UUID version.
• Another system receives your IDs and is strict about the format.
• Your code assumes an ordering across old and new records. A table will now hold both kinds, so sorting by ID may not match the order they were created in.

To keep the previous format, use HasVersion4Uuids instead. If you imported the now-removed HasVersion7Uuids trait, switch to HasUuids, or you’ll get a fatal error rather than a subtle one.

If config/filesystems.php doesn’t define a local disk, its root moves from storage/app to storage/app/private. So older files seem to vanish, because the application is now looking one folder deeper. Open the config file. If local is defined there with a root, as it is in most published configs, nothing changes for you. If you’ve removed it, define it with the old root before you upgrade.

A few more changes are aimed at package authors and custom database drivers, such as the Blueprint and Grammar constructors. If you maintain those, read the full list. Most applications can skip them.

1. Run your tests, but expect test tooling changes first, since PHPUnit 11 and Pest 3 have their own upgrade notes.
2. Upload a file and read it back. Download one that was stored before the upgrade.
3. Compare date-based output between old and new on the same data: an invoice, an overdue list, a monthly report.
4. Create a record with a UUID and pass it through whatever consumes it.
5. Release with the previous version ready to redeploy, and check your logs for a few days.

Often not. A small, well-tested application can follow this page and our upgrade checklist in a short sprint, and an automated tool may cover much of the code change. Bring in someone else when your tests are thin or the date and billing logic is too important to check by eye. Our upgrade service gives you a fixed price after a free assessment. Next, the Laravel 12 to 13 guide covers the following step.