Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework created by Taylor Otwell, first released in 2011. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern and is designed to make common web development tasks — routing, sessions, caching, authentication — simple and expressive, so developers can focus on building features instead of reinventing boilerplate.
Laravel is often called 'the PHP framework for web artisans' because of its emphasis on clean, readable, and elegant syntax. Under the hood it is built on top of several Symfony components, which gives it a solid, battle-tested foundation while still offering a much friendlier developer experience.
Why developers choose Laravel:
- Elegant syntax and expressive query builder
- Eloquent ORM for working with databases using plain PHP objects
- Built-in tools for routing, middleware, validation, and authentication
- Artisan CLI for automating repetitive tasks
- A huge ecosystem: Forge, Vapor, Nova, Sail, Sanctum, Livewire, Inertia, and more
- One of the largest and most active PHP communities in the world
As of 2026, the current major release is Laravel 13 (released March 2026), which requires PHP 8.3+ and ships with a first-party AI SDK, PHP attribute-based configuration, passkey authentication, and semantic/vector search support — on top of everything Laravel 10, 11, and 12 already offered. Laravel 12 (Feb 2025) remains widely used and is still fully supported, so most of what you learn here applies across both versions unless a page specifically calls out a Laravel 13 feature.