On the SitePoint PHP blog there's a recent article posted by Christopher Vundi looking at the new features coming in Laravel 5.5, the next major release of the popular PHP framework.

Laravel 5.5 will require PHP 7.0+. For the features this modern PHP version brings, please see our recap.

Laravel 5.5 will also be the next LTS (Long Term Support) release. This means bugfixes for two years and three years of security updates. That was also the case with Laravel 5.1, but its two-year window of bug fixes is coming to an end this year. Without further ado, let’s see what this new version has to offer.

Instead of just describing the new features, the article opts to walk you through the installation of v5.5 and showing examples of each. Topics covered include:

• Rendering Mailables to the Browser
• Exception Helper Functions
• Introducing the migrate:fresh Command
• Automatic Package Discovery
• Whoops is Back!
• Custom Exception Report Method
• Validation Data Return
• Custom Blade::if() Directives
• Autoregistering of New Artisan Commands in the Kernel

...among many others. There's a long list of new features coming in this release and the tutorial covers each nicely and provides the code examples it would take to make it all work.