From Strapi v4 to v5: key challenges & changes

Strapi v4 is reaching its end of life, and migrating to version 5 is becoming an unavoidable step for production projects. Official support for Strapi v4 will end on October 31, 2025, followed by only six months of critical fixes and security updates.

Beyond this timeframe, staying on Strapi v4 exposes your applications to increasing risks: unpatched security vulnerabilities, persistent bugs, incompatible dependencies, and a gradual loss of ecosystem support. Planning the migration to Strapi 5 ensures the robustness of your projects while taking advantage of the platform’s latest improvements.

Why migrate to Strapi v5?

End of support & security

Official support for Strapi v4 will stop in October 2025. From that date, only critical updates and security fixes will be provided, until April 2026. Beyond that, the version will no longer receive any maintenance.

An unmaintained version quickly leads to issues with security and stability. Without regular fixes, each vulnerability becomes a potential entry point. Moreover, dependencies evolve rapidly: incompatibilities, outdated packages, or unresolved bugs could slow down your projects.

Migrating to Strapi 5 means joining an active maintenance cycle, ensuring security, compliance, and continuity for your production environments.

New features and improvements

• Enhanced content management: new Draft & Publish logic, built-in history management, introduction of Documents, on-the-fly relation creation, and conditional fields to adapt display based on context.
• Optimized developer experience: rewritten in TypeScript for more robustness and adoption of Vite for faster builds and development.
• Ecosystem & native features: new Plugin SDK to streamline development, integration of webhooks, RBAC, and data transfer between instances, plus a modernized Design System v2.
• Simplified migration: a dedicated CLI tool guides the transition from Strapi v4 and handles major breaking changes.
• AI integration: assisted generation of content types, components, and dynamic zones via chat; automatic code analysis or import from a Figma mockup; with tracked and saved changes in one click.

Ecosystem aligned with v5

From now on, all Strapi developments are focused on v5: new features, optimizations, and performance improvements. The plugin ecosystem is moving in the same direction, with maintainers adapting their extensions to the new APIs and structural changes.

By choosing Strapi 5, you ensure long-term project compatibility with the product roadmap and benefit from innovations from the active community.

Key points to watch during migration

Migrating to Strapi 5 requires taking into account several technical changes that may impact your projects, plugins, and configurations. The Strapi team has documented the breaking changes in detail and provided tools to support this transition.

👉 For the full official list of changes, consult Strapi’s migration documentation from v4 to v5.

Key areas to prepare:

New ID management

The classic ID is replaced with the DocumentID. This change comes with the Draft & Publish logic, enabling simultaneous management of draft and published versions. It improves editorial flexibility but requires adapting your existing data models and scripts.
👉 See the breaking change

From Entity Service to Document Service API

The Entity Service API is being replaced by the Document Service API, which centralizes content management and natively supports drafts, history, and multilingual. Developers must adjust their calls and methods to leverage this new API.
👉 See the breaking change

Plugin migration and removal of helper-plugin

Plugins need to be adapted to work with the Document Service API. Some structural changes, such as the removal of the helper-plugin, require adjustments or the use of native alternatives. Systematic compatibility checks are therefore essential.
👉 See the breaking change

Conclusion: planning & anticipation

Migrating to Strapi 5 should be seen as a strategic project, not just a simple update. Anticipating the technical impacts is crucial to ensure compatibility of third-party or internal plugins and to avoid production roadblocks.

A preproduction environment is strongly recommended to test the upgrade, identify friction points, and secure your deployment pipelines. Strapi provides detailed documentation that serves as a valuable guide for every step.

Ultimately, moving to Strapi 5 is both a necessity (end of v4 support) and an opportunity: to optimize your CMS, benefit from a constantly evolving ecosystem, and secure the longevity of your projects. The earlier you plan the migration, the smoother it will be.