Update: Bootstrap version 5 alpha has been officially launched! We wrote an article about the updates and features.

Bootstrap has been around for more than 8 years and it is the most popular CSS Framework in the world. It powers roughly 18 million websites worldwide and these numbers are still growing. If you’re a web developer there is almost zero chance that you wouldn’t have at least heard about it.

The alpha version of Bootstrap 4 has been released on the 19th of August 2015 and it brought a lot of improvements such as flexbox, a better grid system, cards, improved navbars and switching Sass over Less. Additionally it took more than 2 years to bring it to a stable version on January 18th, 2018.

With that being said let’s analyze everything we know about Bootstrap 5’s release date and improvements.

Bootstrap 5 release date

Progress is looking really good on the official Github project tracking board with 686 tasks being shipped and roughly 35 more pending or being in review. Taking in consideration that they’re already working on the alpa-2 and alpha-3 versions, we can expect Bootstrap 5 to be released in late spring this year.

What’s new?

Some of the major changes will be removing jQuery altogether as a dependency, adding back custom icons powered by SVG (which they already launched last year), some CSS & Javascript simplifications, fixes and improvements and removing support for IE 10 & 11.

Here’s a list of all the expected changes:

Removing jQuery

Dropping support for IE 10 & 11

Custom SVG icon library

Switching to Hugo from Jekyll

Major Javascript updates

Minor CSS and class updates and fixes

Removing jQuery 😱

This shouldn’t be a surprise as jQuery has been losing ground in times when frameworks such as React.js, Vue.js and Angular.js are being used by an increasing amount of developers across the world. Additionally many of jQuery’s querying features can be done by just writing vanilla Javascript query selector nowadays.

I believe this is a good time to do it as jQuery has served its purpose for a long time. Removing this dependency will lighten the project’s size considerably.

Dropping IE 10 & 11 support 📺

Both Internet Explorer 10 & 11 accounts for less than 5% of global browser usage and considering that since 2016 Microsoft ended support for versions older than 10 this is an understandable change.

Update: Although there were PR's related to dropping IE 11 support, it was never merged in the final master branch. IE 11 support will still be available for Bootstrap 5.

Update 2: according to a commit made an hour ago it is now clear that IE 11 support is being dropped, however there will be workarounds to make it work.

Read more about the implications and workarounds for using IE 11 with Bootstrap 5.

Custom SVG icon library 🚀

Personally I was a bit disappointed with the lack of an integrated icon library for the 4th version. We usually use Font Awesome or custom SVG icons in our products, but we may soon change that.

With the 5th version there’s a brand new SVG powered icon library coming created by Mark Otto. What’s even better is that it has already been released in December and you can use them in your projects right now!

Read more about our comparison between Bootstrap icons and Font Awesome.

Switching to Hugo from Jekyll 🔝

Jekyll has been around for a long time as a very popular Static Site Generator, however in recent years Hugo has been deemed to be the fastest and most recommended one. We see this change similar to what they did with the 4th version of Bootstrap by switching from Less to Sass.

Javascript & CSS

We expect huge changes to the core Javascript file as jQuery will no longer be part of the project. Expect going through a new documentation regarding event listeners and options. Regarding the CSS there are no major changes but we assume there will be some optimizations, class updates and general fixes.

We also wrote a tutorial for Bootstrap 5 on how you can get started without jQuery, create a blog page, use the new Sass variables and explore the Utility API.

Before finishing the article I would like to present you two of our most popular Bootstrap UI kits from Themesberg. Both use the latest stable version of Bootstrap and will soon be also available in Bootstap 5. Check them out!

Pixel Lite Bootstrap UI Kit

Pixel Lite is a free and open source Bootstrap UI Kit featuring over 200 individual components and 6 hand-crafted pages including about, pricing, sign in and sign up pages.

Pixel comes with SASS and Gulp commands just like in this tutorial and with a couple more powerful features such as project minification and optimization based on advanced Gulp commands.

Pixel Pro Bootstrap 5 UI Kit

Pixel Pro is a premium Bootstrap 5 UI Kit featuring over 1000 components, 35 beautiful example pages and a user dashboard that you can use to kick-start your next project. It also comes with advanced custom SASS files and Gulp commands with fully responsive templates.

If you want to take web development to the next level you can grab Pixel Pro for just $89 dollars from Themesberg.

In conclusion Bootstrap 5 should be faster, simpler and better looking. Don’t expect huge changes in terms of the base set of components, but rather appreciate the time it will save you developing beautiful user interfaces and the shorter loading time for the users.

Check out some awesome free and premium Bootstrap Themes, Templates and UI Kits from Themesberg.