If your online shop runs on WooCommerce, put February 2027 in the diary now. That is when the next major version of WooCommerce is planned to arrive, and it will expect your website to be running on PHP 8.1 or newer.
PHP is the software that runs your shop behind the scenes. Every product page, basket and checkout goes through it. The old versions have stopped being looked after, and the WooCommerce team is done carrying them.
The announcement landed on 29 September 2026, and the plan behind it is kinder than the headline sounds.
What is changing, and when
From that release, 11.6, the minimum PHP version rises to 8.1. February is the month WooCommerce named, not a fixed day, so treat the whole month as the window.
The team has softened the landing. Version 11.3 will show shop owners a notice with their current PHP version and a nudge to talk to their host, and nothing stops working at that point. Shops on PHP 7.4 or 8.0 can keep updating WooCommerce through to version 11.5, the last release planned to run on those older versions.
The timing moved after shop owners pushed back on the original proposal. WooCommerce slotted the requirement into 11.6 so nobody has to change hosting in the middle of peak trading. A February deadline is the easy kind.
Why the old versions cannot stay
WooCommerce's reason is blunt. PHP 7.4 and 8.0 no longer receive security fixes from the people who make PHP. When a flaw turns up in those versions, nobody patches it.
That is not a hypothetical. On 21 October 2026 the UK's National Cyber Security Centre issued an alert about a critical PHP flaw and urged organisations to update, and we covered the scramble in the PHP flaw that shut websites down. A shop holds customer names, addresses and order histories. Running it on software that will never be patched again is a harder position to defend every month.
There is a second reason on WooCommerce's side. Dropping the old versions lets its developers update the parts they build on and stop testing every release against software years out of date. That matters less to you, but it is why the requirement is permanent.
How to check your shop's version in five minutes
You do not need a developer. Five checks, all from your shop's admin area.
1. Find your PHP version. In the WordPress admin, open WooCommerce, then Status. Under Server environment you will see the PHP version your shop runs on.
2. Note your WooCommerce version. The same screen shows it, usually near the top. The two numbers together tell you how much time you have.
3. Ask your host two questions. Which PHP versions do you support, and when do shops on older versions get moved? Any decent host answers both in a sentence or two.
4. Agree who runs the upgrade. Someone has to make the change, test the shop and fix whatever falls over. Decide who that is before February, not during it.
5. Diarise the result. If your shop is already on PHP 8.1 or newer, there is nothing to do but keep WooCommerce updated as usual.
8.1 is the floor, not the target: PHP 8.1 meets the new minimum but stopped receiving security fixes of its own, and PHP 8.2's are scheduled to stop on 31 December 2026 (php.net, checked 4 November 2026). WooCommerce recommends 8.3 or newer. When you ask your host for an upgrade, ask for that.
Will everything in your shop still work?
Probably, and the numbers are on your side. In WooCommerce's opt-in usage data, roughly 7% of tracked shops sit on PHP 7.4 and 2% on PHP 8.0. Among shops that have updated WooCommerce in the past year the combined figure is closer to 6% and falling. That is a sample of shops which share data, not a count of every shop, but the direction is clear.
Your add-ons deserve the caution. WooCommerce ran an automated check across the 1,357 extensions sold in its marketplace and flagged 0.22% as potentially needing work for PHP 8.1, with developers reviewing those by hand. A screen like that cannot promise that every extension, theme or custom tweak on your particular shop will behave afterwards. WooCommerce's advice is the sensible order: back up, make the change on a copy of the shop first, and check checkout and payments before anything else.
Test the checkout first: on the copy of the shop, place a test order from start to finish. Checkout, payment, shipping and tax calculations, order emails. If those all work, the rest is usually cosmetic.
If February comes too soon
There is a holding position. WordPress will not install a plugin version your server does not meet the requirements for, and WooCommerce has confirmed it will not switch off shops already running. A shop on PHP 7.4 can stay on WooCommerce 11.5 and keep trading.
Just know what staying there costs. WooCommerce's support policy keeps fixes for the most serious flaws flowing to older releases for a while, but everything less critical ships only for the newest version. And the PHP underneath receives no fixes at all. Staying on 11.5 is a bridge, not a home.
Small updates beat one big jump
The calmest way to reach February 2027 is one update at a time. Look at the past month alone. WooCommerce 11.2.0 arrived on 7 October 2026 with security fixes and a blunt instruction to update every shop. Two days later, 11.2.1 fixed a bug 11.2.0 had introduced that could block checkout on shops which remove address fields. WordPress 7.1.4 followed on 28 October 2026.
Shops that take updates as they come meet each of those as a five minute job. Shops that leave it a year face one big jump with everything to fix at once. If your version numbers are currently a mystery, that is the real finding from the five checks above.
Who is actually doing this?
Every shop needs an owner for this job, and on plenty of small business websites the honest answer is nobody. If you would rather it were somebody, our WordPress hosting keeps the software patched and the PHP version current as part of the service, and our AI-powered hosting adds monitoring that flags when something needs a decision. Both come with people who read WooCommerce's advisories so you do not have to.
One exit is worth knowing about. If your shop is really a brochure site with a handful of products, a static website removes the engine PHP runs on entirely, and there is nothing left to patch. Our guide to moving from WordPress to a static site covers when that makes sense, and our web design team can talk it through with you.
Either way, check your PHP version this week. Five minutes now tells you whether February 2027 needs anything from you at all.
Hosting where someone else watches the versions
Our WordPress hosting keeps your shop's software patched, the PHP version current and the checkout tested after every change, so February 2027 passes without incident.
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