Migrating from Joomla to Payload: a 2026 guide for Joomla 4 end of life

Joomla 4 reached end of life on 14 October 2025. Since then it has received no further security updates, so a Joomla 4 site now runs unpatched. The vendor’s answer is Joomla 5, and this is one case in the migration series where the vendor path deserves real weight, because moving from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 is a genuine upgrade rather than a rebuild.

We are a React and Next.js shop, and we build on Payload CMS. We will be upfront about that bias. We will be just as upfront that for many Joomla sites, upgrading to Joomla 5 is the right move and a move to Payload would be solving a problem you do not have. This guide covers the honest choice and when each side wins.

Your real options

At Joomla 4 end of life there are two sensible choices, and the first is stronger here than in most end-of-life situations.

1. Upgrade to Joomla 5, and on to 6. Joomla 4 introduced the modern Joomla architecture, and Joomla 5 continues on it. The result is that upgrading is an in-place update along a path Joomla designed, not a ground-up rebuild onto a different system. Joomla 5 is supported with bug fixes to October 2026 and security fixes to October 2027, and Joomla 6, released in October 2025, is now the current series, with security support running to October 2029. So the vendor path from 4 is 5 first, then 6 when you are ready. For a site that is working well and just needs to get back onto a supported version, this is usually the fastest, lowest-risk way to remove the security problem.
2. Replatform onto a different stack. If your Joomla site has been fighting you rather than serving you, end of life is a natural moment to move. A headless CMS like Payload is the option in that category we know best.

The honest framing is that option one keeps a healthy Joomla site healthy, and option two is for teams whose reasons to leave go beyond the deadline.

Who is still on Joomla 4

It helps to be clear about who this actually affects. A lot of the sites still on Joomla 4 are long-tail organisation sites, membership bodies, associations, and community or institutional sites, run by small teams without a standing upgrade cadence. For many of them the site does its job and the only real issue is that it is no longer patched. That profile is exactly the one for which a straightforward upgrade to Joomla 5 tends to be the right answer.

The teams for whom a replatform is worth considering are the ones already working against Joomla: fighting its templating and extension model to do things it was not built for, or needing content in a structured form to feed more than one destination.

What a move involves

If you are weighing a departure rather than an upgrade, two pieces of work define the project.

The extension and template audit. Joomla’s capabilities come largely from extensions and its template system. A site’s real complexity lives in that inventory. Before any decision, list every extension and template, note which are actively maintained and which are custom, and identify the load-bearing ones. That inventory is the best predictor of how much any option costs, an upgrade included.

The structured-content case. The clearest reason to leave Joomla for a headless platform is a need for structured content: content stored as typed, reusable fields that can feed a website, an app, and other destinations from one source. If your Joomla site was already straining to be more than a single website, that is the requirement a move addresses, and it is worth naming plainly because it is the honest dividing line between upgrading and replatforming.

What Payload actually is

Payload is an open-source CMS and application framework built on Next.js and TypeScript, actively maintained, MIT-licensed, and free to self-host with no per-seat or per-year platform fee. Two properties matter most to a team leaving Joomla.

You model content in code. Your collections, fields, and access control are written in TypeScript, in your repository, under version control, so the shape of your content reviews and deploys with the rest of the application.

Your CMS and front end are one project. Since version 3.0, released in November 2024, Payload installs directly into a Next.js app, so the CMS and the front end share one codebase and one deploy. Payload was acquired by Figma in June 2025 and remains open source and actively developed. Joomla, for its part, is also free and open source under the GPL, so a move off it is a choice about fit; there is no licence cost to escape.

How a Joomla to Payload migration works, in brief

The shape mirrors any headless migration, and a Joomla site is usually simpler than an enterprise estate.

• Audit the extensions, templates, content types, and integrations first, because that inventory sizes everything else.
• Map Joomla articles, categories, and custom fields to Payload collections defined in TypeScript, using end of life as the moment to fix a content model that has drifted.
• Migrate content and media with a script that reads from Joomla and writes through Payload’s Local API, so validation catches malformed legacy data during the import rather than after launch.
• Rebuild the front end in Next.js; Joomla templates and extension output do not port, they become React components.
• Preserve SEO with 301 redirects from every old Joomla URL, plus metadata, canonical tags, and sitemaps, then QA page by page against the old site.

For the broader shape of this kind of project, see the dos and don’ts of a CMS migration and a pre-migration checklist for non-technical teams.

When you should stay on Joomla

This is the strongest “stay” case in the migration series, so it is worth stating clearly. Upgrade to Joomla 5 rather than replatform when:

1. Your site works and just needs to be supported again. If Joomla does what you need and the only problem is that version 4 is unpatched, the upgrade to 5 solves it directly, at a fraction of a rebuild’s cost and risk.
2. Your extension estate is healthy. A set of actively maintained extensions that fit your needs is an asset. Rebuilding all of it elsewhere is a cost with no matching benefit.
3. You have Joomla skills in-house or on call. A team comfortable in Joomla and PHP gets the site current quickly, where a move to TypeScript trades that comfort for a saving it may not value.

A move to Payload earns its keep only when the reasons to leave are structural: content that has to be reused across destinations, or a platform you have genuinely outgrown. If that is you, owning your stack, writing your content model in code, and running your CMS and front end as one Next.js app is the case for Payload, and it is the work we do.

Where WAYF fits

WAYF is an official Payload partner and Top Contributor, and we build content platforms on Payload and Next.js. We are happy to tell a team that upgrading to Joomla 5 is the right call when it is, and to run the migration when a move genuinely fits: the audit, the content model, the data move, the Next.js front end, and the SEO-safe cutover.

Book a call and we will tell you whether to upgrade to Joomla 5 or move, based on your actual site.

FAQ

1. When did Joomla 4 reach end of life?

   Joomla 4 reached end of life on 14 October 2025. Bug-fix support had ended a year earlier, on 15 October 2024, and security support ran until the October 2025 date. Since then Joomla 4 has received no security updates, so running it unpatched carries the full risk. Joomla 5 is the vendor upgrade path from 4, and Joomla 6, released in October 2025, is the current series beyond it.

2. Is upgrading from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 a rebuild?

   No. Joomla 4 introduced the modern architecture and Joomla 5 continues on it, so the move is an in-place upgrade rather than a ground-up rebuild. For a healthy Joomla site this is usually the fastest and lowest-risk way to get back onto a supported version, and Joomla 6 is a further step along the same path once you are current.

3. When should I move off Joomla instead of upgrading?

   When your reasons to leave go beyond the deadline, most often a need for structured content that feeds more than one destination, or a platform you have outgrown and are fighting to extend. If the site works and just needs support, upgrading to Joomla 5 is the better call.

4. Is Payload CMS free?

   Payload is open source under the MIT licence and free to self-host. You pay only for your own infrastructure, such as database, file storage, and Node hosting. Joomla is likewise free and open source under the GPL.

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Sources: Joomla security hotfixes for EOL versions, Joomla Project roadmap, Payload GitHub, Payload, Figma: Welcoming Payload.