--- title: Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire? description: A Perforce 2026 PHP Landscape Report surveying over 700 developers reveals a growing skills gap in the PHP ecosystem: more than half of PHP developers have 15+... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire? | daily.dev og:description: A Perforce 2026 PHP Landscape Report surveying over 700 developers reveals a growing skills gap in the PHP ecosystem: more than half of PHP developers have 15+... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/A4HytpOqS.png og:image:alt: Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire? **[The New Stack](https://daily.dev/sources/newstack)** · 6 min read · 60 upvotes · 21 comments ## Summary A Perforce 2026 PHP Landscape Report surveying over 700 developers reveals a growing skills gap in the PHP ecosystem: more than half of PHP developers have 15+ years of experience, while only 15% have five years or less. Hiring has become the top challenge for PHP team managers, with 24% citing lack of skilled personnel as a leading operational concern. Analysts warn this isn't just a PHP problem but an open source problem, compounded by AI-generated code creating silent technical debt without enough junior developers to manage it. Despite the talent crunch, PHP remains foundational — tied with JavaScript at 72% usage — powering millions of e-commerce sites, WordPress installations, and APIs, mostly at companies with fewer than 500 employees. Symfony and Laravel lead the framework landscape. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@astrootter** · 23 upvotes > Keep calm, i'm still here for the next 20 years **@ronaldroe** · 5 upvotes > The younger people who are still inexplicably clinging to it. Don't worry. There will always be people for PHP. There's a reason PHP devs make less in general. They're still a dime a dozen, and that's not changing as long as the evangelists still exist **@sam7work** · 5 upvotes > Hiring has stopped bout 2 years ago , so , yeah, everyone still working on php projects is working on their own projects or doing something else for a living, it's not the lack of php developers, it's the total lack of jobs , never mind how many years of experience , there are no jobs **@quenk** · 4 upvotes > Junior becomes senior? That the lifecycle kekw **@deondazy** · 3 upvotes > I got this. PHP Forever!!! ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [PHP powers most of the web, so why aren’t new developers learning it?](https://daily.dev/posts/php-powers-most-of-the-web-so-why-aren-t-new-developers-learning-it--vetklkvqo) · All Things Open · 76 upvotes · 17 comments --- Tags: [#php](https://daily.dev/tags/php), [#wordpress](https://daily.dev/tags/wordpress), [#laravel](https://daily.dev/tags/laravel), [#technical-debt](https://daily.dev/tags/technical-debt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs"},"datePublished":"2026-04-16T19:00:41.693Z","dateModified":"2026-04-16T19:01:06.624Z","description":"A Perforce 2026 PHP Landscape Report surveying over 700 developers reveals a growing skills gap in the PHP ecosystem: more than half of PHP developers have 15+...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/bac214f40863f1f76a24d4ad3cf2798a?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/bac214f40863f1f76a24d4ad3cf2798a?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The New Stack","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The New Stack","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/newstack","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/newstack"},"commentCount":21,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":60},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":21}],"keywords":"php,wordpress,laravel,technical-debt","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The New Stack","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/newstack"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire?"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-maintain-the-web-when-php-s-veterans-retire--a4hytpoqs","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Keep calm, i’m still here for the next 20 years","datePublished":"2026-04-17T06:59:17.083Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/A4HytpOqS#c-TG8AFXTva","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephane","url":"https://daily.dev/astrootter","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/7487421?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":23}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"The younger people who are still inexplicably clinging to it. Don’t worry. There will always be people for PHP. There’s a reason PHP devs make less in general. They’re still a dime a dozen, and that’s not changing as long as the evangelists still exist","datePublished":"2026-04-21T00:24:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-21T00:25:04.291Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/A4HytpOqS#c-WE80WlPxL","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ronald Roe","url":"https://daily.dev/ronaldroe","image":"https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/1720729?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":5}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Hiring has stopped bout 2 years ago , so , yeah, everyone still working on php projects is working on their own projects or doing something else for a living, it’s not the lack of php developers, it’s the total lack of jobs , never mind how many years of experience , there are no jobs","datePublished":"2026-04-17T14:19:42.042Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/A4HytpOqS#c-s4eSDgQuX","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam","url":"https://daily.dev/sam7work","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJGz1oRsDNA5jHaL8S_Dm_S69r5oVuMT_253w26IC3wacnjq1U=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":5}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Junior becomes senior? That the lifecycle kekw","datePublished":"2026-04-17T12:20:11.003Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/A4HytpOqS#c-HdGLbDWTs","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"QuenK","url":"https://daily.dev/quenk","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--O0TOmw4y--/f_auto/v1715772965/public/noProfile"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"I got this. PHP Forever!!!","datePublished":"2026-04-20T00:31:07.018Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/A4HytpOqS#c-qyV01fh8b","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Deon","url":"https://daily.dev/deondazy","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto/v1636547078/avatars/HI5WU320eZ0AAfMlgSIeb"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}}]} ```