Keeping your application secure and up to date is an important part of application maintenance.
Due to end of security compliance for PHP 7.4 and PHP 8.0, Acquia Cloud applications will be upgraded to PHP 8.2 automatically as part of regular maintenance, as communicated to customers by email and Software End-of-Life Schedule documentation. On 1 October, 2025 we will be retiring PHP 8.1 for both Non-Prod and Production environments.
- Do you need more time? Acquia no longer provides security support for Drupal 7. However, Acquia recognizes that not all customers could migrate their Drupal 7 applications to a later version by November 30, 2025, and is committed to ensuring that the platform remains compatible with Drupal 7 Therefore, Acquia has partnered with HeroDevs to offer Never-Ending Support (NES) for Drupal 7. This program ensures that Drupal 7 applications receive any and all security updates. While purchasing this offering is not mandatory for customers, Acquia strongly recommends it as it provides a clear, official path to remain on Drupal 7 safely while they plan their migration. For more information about this offering, visit this article.
- Do you need assistance in the PHP Upgrade? Contact your Account manager about Acquia's Professional Services PHP Upgrade Assistance package. Acquia Professional Services can assist in upgrading your Drupal Core version and PHP version to a security compliant version.
- Do you want to upgrade yourself? If you choose to upgrade your PHP version yourself, Acquia recommends you should upgrade your non-production applications to test for any incompatibilities in your application. We recommend beginning with your non-production upgrades as soon as possible to ensure you have time to test, prior to upgrading your production application. Once you have resolved any incompatibilities, upgrade your production environment before the end-of-life deadline. See preparing for your php upgrade tutorial for instructions on changing your PHP version.
If your application is facing compatibility issues that are preventing your upgrade to PHP 8.x or higher, Acquia recommends upgrading your application's Drupal version to ensure that your application remains secure and functional. If you are in need of assistance to upgrade your Drupal application, please contact your account manager in order to discuss ways our Professional Services team could provide additional support through an engagement.
Step by Step Guide to upgrading your PHP version on Acquia
See how each version of Drupal supports PHP 8.x
Applications using Drupal 7.x will need to upgrade their Drupal core to Drupal 7.79 or higher in order to upgrade from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.0. Some modules designed for Drupal 7 may be incompatible with PHP 8.0. More information regarding Drupal 7.x compatibility with PHP 8.0 please see the documentation available on Drupal.org.
See What does it take to upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9
As Drupal 8.x has reached its end of life with Drupal.org, no version of Drupal 8.x is compatible with PHP 8.0. If an application is still utilizing Drupal 8.x, it will need to be upgraded to Drupal 9.1 or higher in order to upgrade from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.0 or you will need to purchase long-term support for PHP 7.4. Please contact your account manager in order to discuss these options as needed.
Drupal 9.x customers we recommend upgrading your Drupal core to Drupal 9.3.0 or higher prior to implementing PHP 8.1. More information can be found here.
For customers who intend to upgrade their Drupal core to Drupal 10 in the future Acquia recommends updating to PHP 8.1 over PHP 8.0 as PHP 8.1 or higher is required to complete upgrading your Drupal core to Drupal 10. More information can be found here.
Resource Links
- Preparing For Your PHP 8.1 Upgrade
- Configuring PHP settings
- Drupal PHP Requirements
- Software End-of-Life Schedule
- Drupal 7 to 9 migration plan webinar
- Acquia Support
Dev Resources
- Code Sniffer
- PHP Compatibility Checker
- Contrib Module's with PHP 8.1 issue queue
- Drupal Rector
- PHPStan
- Drupal Check
Modules and Libraries with known PHP 8.x Compatibility Issues
- Forena Reports: issue: PHP 7.4 and PHP 8.1 compatibility
- Behat is currently not compatible with PHP 8.1 because of the Behat Drupal Extension
Common scenarios when upgrading to PHP 8.x
Scenario: We want to leapfrog 8.0 and just switch from 7.4 to 8.1
As a general rule we do not recommend skipping versions. Upgrade PHP to 8.0 and then to 8.1.
- For a customer using Acquia Pipelines and doing this upgrade must first try to run pipeline using 8.0, before trying PHP 8.1. For more information, visit this article.
The amount of time it takes to upgrade can change depending on how many dependencies your repository has. If you feel the upgrade is taking too long you can file a Support ticket through your cloud interface.
Order of operations are important. Check your logs to make sure your dependencies are updating in the correct order.
BLT 12 added Drupal 9 support while BLT 13 updated pipelines for PHP 8 and Composer 2.The specific pipelines commit added in BLT 13 is at https://github.com/acquia/blt/pull/4373.For a customer using Acquia Pipelines and doing this upgrade, I would definitely try running pipeline using 8.0 first, before trying 8.1.
Scenario: We are concerned about Acquia Purge deprecation warnings with PHP 8.1.
Use the dev version of Acquia Purge.$ composer require 'drupal/purge:3.x-dev@dev'
Scenario: Drush Issues with PHP 8.x.
In order to continue to use Drush you must use a version of Drush that is compatible with PHP 8.x. See Drush's documentation on Drush and PHP compatibility.
Acquia recommends you require a site-local Drush as part of your codebase, not your home directory, and run your commands with a specific major version of Drush. It is dangerous to run the globally-installed version of Drush because the behavior of your cron jobs, Cloud Hooks, or other automated scripts may change unexpectedly when a new version of Drush becomes the default See Drush's documentation on how to install drush with composer.
composer require drush/drush
Scenario: I am on Drupal Core 8.x, do I have to upgrade to Drupal 9.x?
D8 is not compatible with PHP 8, so yes you will either have to upgrade Drupal version and PHP version.
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