Release5 August 2026, 14:56

ICanUp Upgraded to PHP 8.5, Laravel 13, and Node.js 24

ICanUp upgraded its core runtime stack to PHP 8.5, Laravel 13, and Node.js 24 LTS. The change covered local development, CI/CD, development, production, and all major application processes.

ICanUp is not only a place where I write about Laravel, PHP, and modern web development. The project itself is continuously used as a real environment for those technologies.

In August 2026, the entire core ICanUp runtime stack was upgraded to PHP 8.5, Laravel 13, and Node.js 24 LTS.

This was not a local experiment: the new versions had to work consistently across local development, CI/CD, development, and production.

Three core upgrades

PHP 8.5

The application runtime, PHP CLI, and PHP-FPM moved to PHP 8.5 across all ICanUp environments.

Laravel 13

The framework and compatible Composer dependencies were upgraded to Laravel 13 without changing existing product behavior.

Node.js 24 LTS

The frontend runtime and production build moved to Node.js 24 LTS and an updated dependency stack.

More than the web request had to be upgraded

For a Laravel application, opening the homepage successfully is not enough to validate a runtime upgrade.

Several ICanUp application processes depend on the runtime, so the upgrade covered the complete operational path:

PHP CLI;
PHP-FPM;
queue workers;
scheduler;
Reverb;
Inertia SSR;
Composer dependencies;
frontend production build.

Each of these components had to remain healthy after the runtime versions changed.

One stack across the complete release flow

Local

The local environment was upgraded first so compatibility issues could be discovered before CI or deployment.

CI/CD

Automated tests, static analysis, code style checks, and builds began running on the updated runtime.

Development

The development environment became the next real verification stage before production.

Production

The final deployment moved live ICanUp to the same supported runtime without keeping the old stack in parallel.

The upgrade had to preserve product behavior

New runtime versions should not change how the product behaves.

After the upgrade, public pages, Admin, authentication, localized routes, notifications, SSR output, SEO metadata, sitemap, RSS, and Open Graph previews were verified.

Automated tests, PHPStan, code-style checks, and the production frontend build also needed to remain green.

The technologies behind the blog are tested by the blog itself

This milestone has special meaning for a technical blog.

When ICanUp publishes material about PHP 8.5, Laravel upgrades, deployment, or compatibility issues, these are not only examples taken from documentation. Many of those topics pass through the real code and production infrastructure of ICanUp itself.

Technical articles that grew from this upgrade can gradually be connected to this News entry as the historical point where a new runtime generation of the project began.

On August 5, 2026, ICanUp completed its move to PHP 8.5, Laravel 13, and Node.js 24 LTS.

This was not simply a version bump in configuration files. The new stack moved from local development through automated verification and development to real production.