PHP Community Celebrates 20 Years of Symfony
Symfony celebrates 20 years and has been shaping web development worldwide since 2005 with its modular architecture, stability, and active community.
(Image: symfony.com)
The PHP framework Symfony is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week. Since 2005, people worldwide have been developing the PHP framework, sharing knowledge, and shaping web development. What started as a single framework has become a global open-source project powering millions of applications.
What sets Symfony apart
Symfony stands for a clear, modular architecture and reusable components that are also used by other projects like Laravel or Drupal. The framework emphasizes stability and long-term support while remaining flexible; it can be used as a complete system or via individual building blocks.
Clear standards, test-driven development, and clean design promote code quality and ensure maintainability. An active international community drives further development, documentation, and exchange, while modern tools like Symfony Flex or the integration of Doctrine ORM and API Platform form the technical foundation.
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Two Decades of Symfony at a Glance
Symfony 1.0 was released in 2005, laying the foundation for structured PHP development. Active community engagement quickly grew from initial meetups and the blog A Week of Symfony. With the %22%5D)$, the project introduced a modular architecture that remains at the core of the framework today. Starting in 2012, Composer and reusable bundles made Symfony more flexible and influenced many other open-source projects.
In the following years, the team developed new standards and tools to improve the developer experience. From 2017 onwards, Flex, autoconfiguration, and extended tools simplified daily work. With newer versions 5 to 7, Symfony has consistently focused on modern PHP versions, API development, and a stronger connection between frontend and backend. Today, the framework boasts over 250 packages and remains a central component of the PHP landscape.
Looking Back and Forward
For its anniversary, the project looks back at key milestones in its development on a dedicated website created for this purpose and invites the community to explore their shared history. In November 2025, the Symfony community will gather at SymfonyCon Amsterdam to discuss the next steps.
Symfony looks back on twenty years of working together and continues to develop the future openly.
(mdo)
