If you're looking for a good summary of what's coming up in the next major version of PHP (v7.3), look no further than this new post from the Cloudways blog.

PHP is surely giving a tough competition to other scripting languages, thanks to the developers for the rapid updates they unleash from time to time. [...] In the series of these updates, PHP recently has got another milestone with the release of RC1 of PHP 7.3. The version also got some new much-needed updates. While the official release date of PHP 7.3 is given of late December 2018.

In this blog, I will discuss newly introduced PHP 7.3 features and updates.

The post then goes through several of the improvements and new features, providing code examples and descriptions for:

• Flexible Heredoc and Nowdoc Syntaxes
• the PCRE2 Migration
• is_countable function
• Argon2 Password Hash Enhancements
• Same Site Cookie

...just to name a few. There are several others included in the post as well. While PHP 7.3 hasn't been released as a final version yet, you can test these changes out via the current release candidate in your development: PHP 7.3.0RC2. Additionally, more information about the RFCs - including those that weren't accepted - can be found on the PHP wiki.

On the main PHP.net site, they've posted the announcement of the release of the latest Release Candidate for the upcoming PHP 7.3.0 version: PHP 7.3.0.RC2.

The PHP team is glad to announce the next PHP 7.3.0 pre-release, PHP 7.3.0RC2. The rough outline of the PHP 7.3 release cycle is specified in the PHP Wiki.

[...] For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. Internal changes are listed in the UPGRADING.INTERNALS file. These files can also be found in the release archive.

As with other preview releases you can download this version from the QA site for source packages and the Windows QA site for the Windows binaries.