The PHP team is pleased to announce the first release candidate of PHP 8.6.0, RC2. It is not a typo: a mistake was made while packaging RC1, so RC2 was released instead. For a full explanation, please see this blog post. This continues the PHP 8.6 release cycle, whose rough outline is specified in the PHP Wiki.

Source downloads of PHP 8.6.0 RC2 are available on the download page.

Please carefully test this version and report any issues found in the GitHub Issues.

Please DO NOT use this version in production, it is an early test version.

For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.

The next release will be RC3, planned for 8 October 2026.

The signatures for the release can be found in the manifest or on the pre-release builds page.

Thank you for helping us make PHP better.