This Week In PHP Internals | July 29, 2026

PHP internals is running a major deprecation vote for PHP 8.6, with 35 separate items each needing a two-thirds majority.

Most minor changes are passing easily, but high-impact proposals like list(), the gettext _() alias, in/out/inout keywords, and the dechunk stream filter are facing resistance.

Some discussions question whether certain deprecations are premature or unnecessary, so the final shape of the release is still unsettled.

New votes have also opened on the pipe assignment operator |>=, readonly property defaults, and writes to const object properties.

The outcome will determine what stays supported in PHP 8.6 and what developers, libraries, and frameworks must adapt before release.