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PHP 8 , released on November 26, 2020 is a new major version. It introduces some breaking changes, as well as lots of new features and performance improvements.

Because of the breaking changes, there's a higher chance you'll need to make some changes in your code to get it running on PHP 8. If you've kept up to date with the latest releases though, the upgrade shouldn't be too hard, since most breaking changes were deprecated before in the 7.* versions.

Besides breaking changes, PHP 8 also brings a nice set of new features such as the JIT compiler, union types, attributes, and more.

The JIT Complier :) It is the first time that PHP version has a compiler – JIT – that caches a version of your already interpreted code and generates a machine code as an output (machine code is on with 0’s and 1’s only). The “just in time” compiler promises speed improvements for complex tasks and algorithms and opens new opportunities for the PHP language to broaden its reach and applications. 

read more at https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8

ready to upgrade -> https://stitcher.io/blog/php-8-upgrade-mac

According to statistics from W3Techs, roughly 78.9 percent of all Internet sites today run on PHP.

But on December 31, 2018, security support for PHP 5.6.x will officially cease, marking the end of all support for any version of the ancient PHP 5.x branch.

This means that starting with next year, around 62 percent of all Internet sites still running a PHP 5.x version will stop receiving security updates for their server and website's underlying technology, exposing hundreds of millions of websites, if not more, to serious security risks.

If a hacker finds a vulnerability in PHP after the New Year, lots of sites and users would be at risk.

"This is a huge problem for the PHP ecosystem, While many feel that they can 'get away with' running PHP 5 in 2019, the simplest way to describe this choice is: Negligent."

"To be totally fair: It's likely that any major, mass-exploitable flaw in PHP 5.6 would also affect the newer versions of PHP," Arciszewski added.

"PHP 7.2 will get a patch from the PHP team, for free, in a timely manner; PHP 5.6 will only get one if you're paying for ongoing support from your OS vendor.