Pantheon release notes

We are pleased to announce that all of our actively maintained WordPress plugins are now confirmed fully compatible with WordPress 6.9.

Actively Maintained Plugins

The following plugins have been tested and verified for compatibility:

• WP SAML Auth
• Pantheon Advanced Page Cache
• Pantheon HUD
• Native PHP Sessions
• Pantheon Content Publisher
• WP Redis

Action Required

We recommend updating your Pantheon plugins to their latest versions alongside your WordPress 6.9 core upgrade. This ensures you receive the latest performance optimizations, security patches, and full compatibility with PHP 8.4.

As a best practice, always test these updates in a Dev or Multidev environment before deploying to Live.

Pantheon has released a new version of our WP SAML Auth WordPress plugin. This update focuses on modernizing PHP support and providing developers with more granular control over SAML configurations.

What's New

• PHP 8.4 Compatibility: Full support for PHP 8.4 has been added.
• Updated PHP Requirements: The minimum supported PHP version has been increased to 7.4 to ensure better security and performance.
• WordPress 6.9 Compatibility: Confirmed compatibility with WordPress 6.9.
• Enhanced Configuration: Added the wp_saml_auth_internal_config filter, allowing developers to customize the OneLogin SAML configuration.
• SimpleSAMLphp 2.x Support: Improved auto-detection for SimpleSAMLphp 2.x and optimized autoloader discovery to skip redundant processes when the SimpleSAML\Auth\Simple class is already loaded.

Bug Fixes

Settings Page Warnings: Fixed a warning message on the plugin's settings page that appeared for users not utilizing SimpleSAML.

Important: Compatibility & Testing

While this update improves autoloader discovery, it changes how the plugin interacts with the local environment. We strongly recommend testing in a lower environment before upgrading especially if you use:

• Non-Standard Installations: Custom SimpleSAMLphp installations located in non-standard directories.
• Manual Autoloaders: Custom autoloader code that manually handles the loading of SimpleSAMLphp.

Action required

We encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of WP SAML Auth as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features and compatibility updates. updating to get the latest features and compatibility updates.

If you have questions or concerns, please open issues in the queue for the plugin.

New sites created on the Pantheon platform now default to Tika 3.x. Previously, new sites defaulted to Tika 1.x.

This change only affects newly created sites. Existing sites will continue to use their current Tika version and are not impacted by this update.

Overriding the default

If you need to use Tika 1.x for a new site, you can explicitly set the version in your pantheon.yml file:

However, Tika 1.x will be removed on January 26, 2026. We recommend testing your site with Tika 3.x and migrating before this date.

More information

• Apache Tika on Pantheon
• Tika 3.2 now available
• Tika 1.x end of life

PHP versions 8.3.30 and 8.4.17 are now available on the platform. These updates include bug fixes and enhancements that improve performance and stability. Updates will be applied automatically over the next few days, so no manual action is required.

PHP 8.3.30 is available on both PHP Runtime Generation 1 and PHP Runtime Generation 2.

PHP 8.4 is only available with the new PHP Runtime Generation 2.

The PHP Foundation officially considers PHP 8.1 as End Of Life status as of December 31, 2025.

However, Pantheon includes LTS security coverage for all available PHP versions with PHP Runtime Generation 2. This coverage is automatic and requires no further action. By providing LTS editions of older PHP versions, customers can safely operate their sites while working through upgrade plans to modern versions.

For the best performance and security, Pantheon recommends running PHP 8.2 and above.

The final set of sites previously excluded from the PHP Runtime Generation 2 rollout are now being migrated. These sites were excluded because they were using Solr 3 with Drupal 9+. With Solr 3 support for Drupal 9+ ending in December 2025, these sites are no longer excluded from the Generation 2 rollout.

Rollout Timeline

Opting Out

Sites may continue to opt out of PHP Runtime Generation 2 until the Gen 1 removal takes place starting April 6, 2026.

Editorial note: These updates were completed and deployed to the platform on December 23rd 2025.

PHP versions 8.1.34, 8.2.30, 8.3.29, and 8.4.16 are now available on the platform. These updates include important security fixes, along with bug fixes and enhancements that improve performance and stability. Updates will be applied automatically over the next few days, so no manual action is required.

PHP 8.4 is only available with the new PHP Runtime Generation 2.

The PHP 8.4 upgrade process automatically includes an upgrade to PHP Runtime Generation 2 if your site hasn't been upgraded already.

Important PHP version information

• PHP 8.1 and 8.2 are currently receiving security-only updates.
• For more details, see the full list of PHP supported versions.

For the best performance and security, Pantheon recommends running PHP 8.2 and above.

The phpredis extension has been updated to the latest version, 6.3.0, for environments using PHP 7.4+ on PHP Runtime Generation 2.

To view the latest improvements and fixes, view the changelog on GitHub.