PHP 8.5 support in a stable release

[AJenbo]

Is the bug applicable and reproducable to the latest version of the package and hasn't it been reported before?

• Yes, it's still reproducable

What version of Laravel Excel are you using?

3.1.37

What version of Laravel are you using?

12.50.0

What version of PHP are you using?

8.5

Describe your issue

PHP 8.5 was released in November 2025. Laravel-Excel v3.1 depends on phpoffice/phpspreadsheet ^1.30, which resolves to 1.30.2. This version explicitly raises an error on PHP 8.5 to steer users toward the 2.x/3.x branches that have proper 8.5 support. While it's possible to pin phpspreadsheet to 1.30.0 to work around this, that version was written before PHP 8.5 existed and simply didn't check, it wasn't tested or validated against 8.5. Relying on that feels fragile, and any future 1.30.x patch could reintroduce the block.

The 4.x branch already depends on a phpspreadsheet version with proper PHP 8.5 support, and the deprecation fix in #4334 was merged over a month ago. However, without a stable release, adopting it is difficult in practice.

Many organizations have policies that prevent running dev/unreleased packages in production. These versions aren't tracked in vulnerability databases, can't be audited in the same way, and don't provide the stability guarantees that compliance and security reviews require. This isn't about preference, it's a real blocker for teams that would otherwise be ready to upgrade.

How can the issue be reproduced?

Set up a project with PHP 8.5 and Laravel 12.
2. Run composer require maatwebsite/excel — no stable version provides validated PHP 8.5 support.
3. v3.1 resolves to phpoffice/phpspreadsheet 1.30.2, which explicitly blocks PHP 8.5.
4. Pinning to 1.30.0 avoids the block but relies on a version that was never tested against PHP 8.5.
5. The 4.x-dev branch works but cannot be used in environments that require stable releases.

What should be the expected behaviour?

There should be a stable release of Laravel-Excel that provides validated PHP 8.5 support, whether that's through a 4.0 release, a 3.1.x patch with a compatible phpspreadsheet constraint, or another approach. PHP 8.5 has been out for over three months, and it would be great to have an officially supported path.

If there are remaining issues or tasks blocking this, I'd be grateful for visibility into what's needed. I'm happy to contribute developer time to help get it over the line.

[patrickbrouwers]

I currently don't have the time to look into this in the amount of care I would want to before tagging a stable release. At the moment I'm not actively using the package myself, which doesn't help.

I've asked in multiple issues for people to thoroughly test and confirm everything is stabled in the 4.0-dev branch, however unfortunately nobody has really found time to do it.

Nothing specific is blocking, except I have no idea if the phpspreadsheet 3+ breaking change fixes are actually correct and nothing was missed.

[AJenbo]

Thanks, I will request some time to analyze and test 4.0 and creat PRs for anything I find. I expect to have time to do so in March.

@calebdw I saw you where interested in a status on this as well.

[calebdw]

We're running the 4.x branch in prod right now (living dangerously, I know) and haven't experienced any negative effects (so far lol)

[calebdw]

Let me know if you need help with anything!

[patrickbrouwers]

Thanks guys

[Luke-Shepp]

Is there any progress on this?

Currently in the process of a Laravel 13 and PHP 8.5 upgrade, but blocked on this package without switching to dev. I can see there's a PR open but no reviews as-yet

Thanks!

[patrickbrouwers]

Waiting for confirmation from the people above, the PR doesn't really add any value to me

[AJenbo]

I'm currently trying to change the world of PHP but will get back to this as soon as I have a gap this month.

[patrickbrouwers]

Awesome :) let me know!

[chinmaypurav]

Is there any progress on this?

Currently in the process of a Laravel 13 and PHP 8.5 upgrade, but blocked on this package without switching to dev. I can see there's a PR open but no reviews as-yet

Thanks!

Laravel 13 support added for 3.x version #4348

[billypoke]

Just ran a successful import of several thousand rows on 4.x (and Laravel 12, PHP 8.4) and no issues at all. It was pretty basic, but the spreadsheet was originally in google sheets and had a ton of hand entered data and wacky formatting/blank rows. No warnings or errors at all.

I should say this involved reading/parsing another workbook/spreadsheet to grab lookup values, then parsing the new spreadsheet to import the data

https://gist.github.com/billypoke/51c5d922ce5a67d30af92ba06cb6a7a9