Here are some of the key features of Joomla 6.0 (the 6.x series) — both for site-owners and developers..
Major new features
- Automatic core updates
Joomla 6 introduces automated updates for the core system, built on the The Update Framework (TUF) for secure, signed updates.
Benefit: Less manual maintenance, improved security update workflow. - Enhanced default templates & child-theme support
The default front-end template (Cassiopeia) now has a child template with extended customisation: colours, fonts, etc., without needing custom CSS.
Benefit: Easier visual tweaks and safer upgrades (since child template isolate changes). - Advanced versioning including custom fields
Content versioning has been improved: not only articles but also custom fields, tags, categories are included in version history.
Benefit: Better control over content changes, ability to restore older version of everything. - New custom field types
Two new custom-field types: - “Notes” field: to insert instructional text between fields or in an article.
- “Numbers” field: numeric input, with optional currency formatting.
Benefit: More flexible data modelling out-of-the-box. - Performance & caching improvements
For example, caching of language files was introduced (language.file caching).
Also under-the-hood refactoring to take advantage of modern PHP versions and standards. - Developer / infrastructure enhancements
- Minimum PHP version raised (to leverage newer features).
- Cleaner codebase: removal of deprecated APIs, aligning to PSR-standards.
- Improved CLI/automation support and composer integration.
Benefit: Better extension development experience, future-proofing. - UI & accessibility improvements
- The default templates (front and backend) now use CSS transitions for smoother navigation.
- Continued focus on accessibility (WCAG compliance) and a more modern admin UI.
- Migration / backward compatibility support
Joomla 6 includes a plugin “Behaviour – Backward Compatibility 6” (introduced in 5.4) to ease the transition from Joomla 5 to Joomla 6.
Benefit: Smoother upgrade path for extensions and sites built on prior versions. - Other nice-to-haves
- Media Manager thumbnails for any file type.
- Batch removal of tags from multiple articles.
- New fields for date and datetime-local.
- Improved TinyMCE editor version (8.0.1) for content editing.
