PHP 8.6.0 RC5 is out for testing. Joe Ferguson posted the announcement to the internals list for the release managers (Matteo Beccati, Joe Ferguson, and Daniel Scherzer). They expect PHP 8.6.0 in about two weeks, on November 19, 2026.

The November 19 date matches the timetable from our RC3 coverage, which had RC5 as the final step before general availability. Keep in mind RC5 is still a test build:

This is an early test release and not intended for production use.

Test Your Apps and Dependencies

You have two weeks to find problems before 8.6.0 ships. Some things you can do now:

  • Add RC5 to your CI matrix and run your full test suite against it
  • Run composer install on 8.6 to see which of your dependencies don't allow PHP 8.6 in their version constraints yet
  • If you maintain a package, test it on RC5 before 8.6.0 ships

If you last tested on an early release candidate, run your tests again. RC3 alone changed how fibers report errors and reverted the hrtime() clock change. Our RC3 post has the details.

The release managers ask you to test carefully and report bugs on GitHub Issues.

How to Get It

The SHA256 hashes and PGP signatures are in the announcement and in a gist. For everything that's coming in 8.6, see our PHP 8.6 version page. Happy testing!