This is a beta release for the next feature release of Drupal 8. Betas are good testing targets for developers and site builders who are comfortable reporting (and where possible, fixing) their own bugs. Beta releases are not recommended for non-technical users, nor for production websites. More information on beta releases.

This minor release provides new improvements and functionality without breaking backward compatibility (BC) for public APIs. Note that there may be changes in internal APIs and experimental modules that require updates to contributed and custom modules and themes per Drupal core's backwards compatibility and experimental module policies. Both policies have been updated for the 8.1.x release.

This beta release includes the feature and API additions below. A handful of additional beta target issues are being considered for a later beta, including an experimental content moderation module, a sidebar for configuring site elements in place, a new date range field type, and a couple CKEditor enhancements.

New stable features

The following new stable features have been added to Drupal 8.2.0-beta1:

Usability improvements

In addition to the new features listed above, 8.2.0-beta1 includes many small user interface enhancements for usability, especially related to user interface text and form buttons.

REST and API-first improvements

Drupal 8.2.0-beta1 significantly improves REST and API-first support with the following new features, API and developer experience improvements, and bug fixes.

Other API improvements

Modules requiring Drupal 8.2.0-beta1 or later can take advantage of these additional API improvements:

Experimental modules

The following modules are considered experimental for this release. Experimental modules are provided with Drupal core for testing purposes, but are not yet fully supported.