Laravel’s story begins with a developer’s frustration. In 2011, Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel, wasn’t satisfied with the limitations of existing PHP frameworks, particularly CodeIgniter, a popular option at the time. He envisioned a framework that offered:

• Simplified development process: Streamlining web application creation.
• Elegant syntax: Making the code easier to read and write.
• Powerful features: Boosting developer productivity.

Drawing inspiration from CodeIgniter, Otwell set out to build Laravel. Laravel’s first version emerged in June 2011. 

Here’s a brief history of its development:

Release of Laravel 1: The first version of Laravel was released in June 2011. It introduced features like the ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) called Eloquent, a powerful query builder, a simple routing system, and built-in support for user authentication.

Laravel 2 and 3: These versions continued to refine the framework, adding features like a command-line interface called Artisan, support for composer for package management, and improvements to the routing system and templating engine.

Laravel 4: Released in May 2013, Laravel 4 was a significant update that introduced a more modular architecture. It included support for Composer packages out of the box, introduced the concept of service providers and facades, and brought improvements to the ORM and routing system.

Laravel 5: Released in February 2015, Laravel 5 brought significant improvements to the framework. It introduced the Laravel Elixir package for asset compilation, integrated support for the Flysystem filesystem abstraction library, added method injection in controllers, and introduced the Laravel Scheduler for task scheduling.

Laravel 6 to Laravel 8: These versions continued to build on the foundation laid by previous releases, introducing features like Laravel Vapor for deploying Laravel applications to AWS Lambda, improved support for job batching, and enhancements to the Blade templating engine. Each release focused on improving performance, security, and developer experience.

Laravel 8: Released in September 2020, Laravel 8 introduced features like Laravel Jetstream, a new application scaffolding for Laravel that offers pre-built application designs and robust authentication options. It also introduced Laravel’s new rate-limiting feature, enabling developers to limit the number of requests to certain routes in their applications.

Laravel 9 (February 8, 2022 – Released, Support Ended August 2023)

• Introduced streamlined routing macros for cleaner code.
• Enhanced lazy collection methods for improved performance.
• Provided a new Rate Limiting facade for robust API protection.
• Currently only receives security fixes until February 6, 2024.

Laravel 10 (February 14, 2023 – Released)

• Focused on a more streamlined application structure with a separation of concerns.
• Introduced per-second rate limiting for granular control over API access.
• Offered health routing for monitoring application health.
• Supported for bug fixes until August 6, 2024 and security fixes until February 4, 2025.

Laravel 11 (March 12, 2024 – Current Stable Release)

• Continued improvements on the streamlined application structure from Laravel 10.
• Introduced named arguments for functions (use with caution as future versions might rename arguments).
• Provided new Artisan commands for easier project management.
• Improved queue testing for better test coverage.
• Supported for bug fixes until September 3, 2025 and security fixes until March 12, 2026.