Rather watch than read?
Then Lotte Pitcher (Developer Advocate at Umbraco), me, Bjarke Berg (Head of CMS at Umbraco), and Kevin Jump (Umbraco community member and commercial package developer) will give you a walkthrough of all the big features in this special Umbraco 13:
Blog post overview:
- Key Features
- Umbraco Add-ons
- Documentation
- What's happened since Umbraco 10 LTS?
- Umbraco 13 on Umbraco Cloud
- Get started with Umbraco 13
- Roll the Credits
Key Features of Umbraco 13
A Long-Term Supported Version
Umbraco 13, as an LTS version, ensures stability and ongoing support. Aligning with Microsoft's latest LTS version, .NET 8, and C# 12, it guarantees a secure and forward-compatible platform for your projects until Q4 2026.
This is part of our release cadence for the Umbraco CMS, ensuring predictability in releases as well as making it easier for you to plan your upgrades. You can read more about Long-term Support and End-of-Life policies in the Product Knowledge Center.
.NET 8 and C# 12: Harnessing the power of the latest technologies
Leverage the full potential of .NET 8 and C# 12 with Umbraco 13. This upgrade to .NET 8 includes improvements on the garbage collector to adjust the memory limit on the fly which will open up better and more flexible scaling which again can be turned into better performance and more sustainable hosting. There are also improvements to Serialization, JSON, and a whole lot more - including, of course, all the C# 12 features like Primary Constructors, Collection expressions, Alias any type, and Lambda Improvements. This is an upgrade that’ll give you enhanced performance, scalability, and a suite of new features, providing a robust foundation for your development needs.
Being on the latest technology also has sustainable advantages - and we like that! Our internal tests on the clean starter kit show a small improvement of 1-3% more requests/second compared to running Umbraco 12 on the same setup. Upgrading to the latest version is often a step in the right direction sustainability-wise - but remember that upgrading isn’t always enough. Being carbon-aware and sustainably (re)designing and developing web projects is important - check out the Umbraco “Sustainability Best Practices” to get a head start on this.
Dynamic Root
The introduction of Dynamic Root for the Multinode Treepicker is an easier and more powerful way to set up dynamic roots compared to the old Xpath syntax. Furthermore, this feature is an enabler for future features, that require the backoffice to not use the published content cache.
Introducing Blocks in the Rich Text Editor
As an alternative to Macros, you now have the option to use Blocks - known from Block List and Block Grid - in the Rich Text Editor, allowing for a more structured and dynamic content creation experience. And as we plan for more block functionality in Umbraco in general - including global blocks as reusable content as described in this RFC - this is a natural step that aligns with how you work with Umbraco.
More power to the editors with no-code/low-code Webhooks
Webhooks is a new headless, no-code/low-code feature in Umbraco 13, allowing editors to do seamless integration with third-party systems.
We’ve added UI so that you can type in the URL you want to call (including potential custom headers) and choose one or more events on which you want the URL to be called. Under the hood, we’ll take care of executing, queuing, retrying, and logging. And you can easily extend the functionality by implementing your own webhooks.
This feature lets you move certain tasks away from your developers and gives your editors more power and control.
Nested field limiting and nested field expansion
Inspired by the Umbraco Commerce Storefront API, with Umbraco 13, you get nested field limiting and nested field expansion for the Content Delivery API.
This is an upgrade to the headless Content Delivery API, where you’ll find new functionality, like the option to limit and expand properties on multiple levels.
Additional Features of Umbraco 13
In addition to the key features above, Umbraco 13 also brings a suite of improvements:
- Minimal Hosting Model: Simplifies application initiation, aligning with Microsoft's latest standards.
- Updated NuGet Dependencies: Including an update to ImageSharp for better performance and security.
- Enhanced Media Delivery API: Improved headless media delivery with necessary breaking changes for a more efficient media experience.
- Concurrent Login Control: This new security option prevents multiple simultaneous logins.
- New Login Screen: A visual update for users of Umbraco - a new login screen. Not only will this give you and your editors a refreshed look and feel, but you also get a log-in experience built on the latest technology, as well as a sneak peek into the future "Bellissima" backoffice revamp, which will be part of the Umbraco 14 release.
Umbraco Add-ons For Umbraco 13
Also released today are new versions for both Umbraco Forms and Deploy. While they are new major versions, the changes have been made primarily to ensure full support for running on Umbraco 13 and .NET 8.
We have introduced a couple of new updates, though those have had to wait for a major version. With Forms, workflows now run using async/await which should lead to some performance benefits for high-traffic sites.
For Deploy, we've introduced support for Umbraco 13's Webhooks - both for transfer of schema between environments and for adding webhook events for deployment operations.
You can read the details in the version-specific upgrade notes for Umbraco Forms and Deploy:
- Umbraco Forms 13: release notes /version specific upgrade details
- Umbraco Deploy 13: release notes /version specific upgrade details
As of today, Umbraco Commerce, Workflow, and UI Builder will also have Umbraco 13 compatible versions out.
Get off to a great start with Umbraco 13 documentation
To help you get started with the new features and changes in Umbraco, new documentation has been made available:
Content Delivery API:
What’s happened since Umbraco 10 LTS?
With an upgrade to Umbraco 13 LTS, it is not just the specific version 13 features you’ll get access to, but also all the great new features introduced in 10, 11, and 12.
If you haven’t upgraded since the last LTS version, Umbraco 10, here are even more great features and improvements to look forward to, including:
- Headless capabilities in the core: With Umbraco 13, you now have a full suite of built-in headless features at your fingertips: Content Delivery API, Media Delivery API, Preview, and Webhooks. There's no need for extra installations or the time-consuming task of developing your headless API. Toggle the switch, and you're ready to roll.
- Tiny MCE: Updated to the latest version of TinyMCE with all the well-known functionalities from the leading Rich Text Editor on the market. Also, with version 6 of Tiny MCE, you can now integrate with premium plugins from Tiny.
- Maintenance page: With a new fully customizable maintenance page, you'll have a simple way to nicely show if your site is e.g. under maintenance. You can also choose to continue showing your website while Umbraco is in upgrade mode.
- EF Core support: Entity Framework Core is now available within Umbraco and ready to be used in your extensions or custom integrations. This way, you'll be able to work with the tooling you know best while benefitting from working within Umbraco scopes/transactions.
Umbraco Cloud: The perfect place for your Umbraco 13 project
Experience Umbraco 13 at its best on Umbraco Cloud. Enjoy the benefits of the latest features, coupled with the efficiency and reliability of Umbraco Cloud, making your CMS experience smoother and more powerful than ever.
All new projects on Umbraco Cloud will be running the full Umbraco 13 bundle (including the latest version 13 upgrades to Forms, Deploy etc.) and automatically be upgraded whenever there’s a new minor or patch release, ensuring you’re always on the latest, most secure version of Umbraco - without lifting a finger.
If you’re already on Cloud and want to upgrade to Umbraco 13 LTS, please follow the Major Upgrade documentation.
Ready to Experience Umbraco 13?
Get started with Umbraco 13 today, available on Umbraco Cloud and NuGet. Embrace the new era of content management with Umbraco 13 and elevate your digital experiences to new heights.
Roll the credits 🎉
Of the 104 bug fixes and feature additions in Umbraco 13.0.0, a total of 25 of them have been contributed by the community, by 11 unique contributors.
We’re welcoming 2 brand new contributors who have made their first pull request for Umbraco CMS; they’re marked with a star below. Welcome to the contributor club Andrew McKaskill and Brett Smith 🏆
⭐ = First pull request to Umbraco CMS
And of course, as a thank you, we’ve just added another bunch of trees to our growing plot for today’s 13.0.0 release to celebrate your contributions! 🌳🌲🌴
