📣 Play 2.9.0 and 3.0.0 are available!

[mkurz]

The Play Team is thrilled to announce the release of Play 2.9.0 and 3.0.0! 🎉 These releases bring highly anticipated new features, including support for the latest Java LTS versions and Scala 3. They continue our commitment to making Play more modular, flexible, and secure. Play 3.0, together with Play 2.9, represents a significant milestone as they are the first major releases in almost four years and the first major releases entirely driven by the community. Starting in late 2021, the project transitioned from Lightbend Inc. to a core team of dedicated individuals, as detailed in our sponsorship page. This release is the result of months of hard work from the Play core team and our fantastic community, with more than 600 pull requests merged from 112 contributors.

📗 What's New?

For a detailed overview of all the new features, please visit our Play 2.9 release highlights and Play 3.0 release highlights pages on the Play website.

🗒️ Play 3.0 vs Play 2.9: How Play Deals with Akka’s License Change

Simultaneously with the Play 3.0 release, we also introduced Play 2.9, which is nearly identical to Play 3.0. It offers the same features and will receive parallel maintenance, benefiting from identical enhancements and bug fixes.

Play 3, however:

• Uses Apache Pekko under the hood instead of Akka, and
• Switches the groupId to org.playframework to emphasize that the project is now entirely community-driven and fully committed to Open Source.

If you want to learn more about Apache Pekko and the motivation behind the switch to it in Play 3.0, read "How Play Deals with Akka’s License Change".

🗺️ How to start or migrate to Play 3.0

To get started with Play, follow the instructions on our Getting Started page. If you're migrating from an older version to Play 3.0, our migration guide will be a valuable resource.

Full Changelog

Following pull requests got merged for this release:

Following pull requests got merged for this release (click to expand)

• Mention JPA provider in migration notes #12136 Mention JPA provider in migration notes by @mkurz
• Patch updates (backport #12131) by @scala-steward #12133 Patch updates (backport [2.9.x] Patch updates #12131) by @scala-steward
• okhttp 4.12.0 (was 4.11.0) (backport #12121) by @scala-steward #12132 okhttp 4.12.0 (was 4.11.0) (backport [2.9.x] okhttp 4.12.0 (was 4.11.0) #12121) by @scala-steward
• Play 3 highlights + migration guide + docs adjustments #12011 Play 3 highlights + migration guide + docs adjustments by @mkurz
• Move scala-steward config in .github folder + pin spring libs #12061 Move scala-steward config in .github folder + pin spring libs by @mkurz
• Dependency upgrades #12058 Dependency upgrades by @mkurz
• sbt-js-engine 1.3.3 #12056 sbt-js-engine 1.3.3 by @mkurz
• webjars-locator-core 0.54 #12054 webjars-locator-core 0.54 by @mkurz
• mockito-core 5.6.0 (was 5.5.0) #12036 mockito-core 5.6.0 (was 5.5.0) by @scala-steward
• htmlunit-driver 4.13.0 (was 4.12.0) #12037 htmlunit-driver 4.13.0 (was 4.12.0) by @scala-steward
• hibernate-core 6.3.1.Final (was 6.3.0.Final) #12035 hibernate-core 6.3.1.Final (was 6.3.0.Final) by @scala-steward
• Patch updates #12040 Patch updates by @scala-steward
• Add addDependencyTreePlugin #12048 Add addDependencyTreePlugin by @mkurz
• selenium-api 4.14.1 (was 4.12.1) #12038 selenium-api 4.14.1 (was 4.12.1) by @scala-steward
• Latest netty patch release #12043 Latest netty patch release by @mkurz
• Pronoun change in IDE.md for gender neutrality #12027 Pronoun change in IDE.md for gender neutrality by @alexdboxall
• play-ws milestone which switches everything to org.playframework #12021 play-ws milestone which switches everything to org.playframework by @mkurz
• typesafehub/config => lightbend/config #12020 typesafehub/config => lightbend/config by @xuwei-k
• Last batch of switching to org.playframework #12018 Last batch of switching to org.playframework by @mkurz
• Some libs moved to org.playframework #12016 Some libs moved to org.playframework by @mkurz
• Fix errors if play-published-local-* cache entries not found #12015 Fix errors if play-published-local-* cache entries not found by @ihostage
• Re-enable mima checks after first Play 3 milestone + scripted tests after scalatestplus-play Pekko release #12014 Re-enable mima checks after first Play 3 milestone + scripted tests after scalatestplus-play Pekko release by @mkurz
• Move to org.playframework for Play 3 #12013 Move to org.playframework for Play 3 by @mkurz
• Pekko #11847 Pekko by @mkurz

For more details see the 2.9.0 full list of changes, the 3.0.0 full list of changes, the 2.9.0 milestone and the 3.0.0 milestone

❤️ Thanks to our premium sponsors!

If you find this OSS project useful for work, please consider asking your company to support it by becoming a sponsor.
You can also individually sponsor the project by becoming a backer.

🙇 Thanks to our contributors

Finally, thanks to the community for their help with detailed bug reports, discussions about new features and pull request reviews. This project is only possible due to the help we had from amazing contributors.
Special thanks to all code contributors who helped with this particular release!

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This discussion was created from the release 📣 Play 2.9.0 and 📣 Play 3.0.0.