Umbraco 17 — The LTS Release Shaping the Future of CMS Development

Every few years, the digital world takes a significant leap forward. New frameworks arrive, performance expectations rise, and businesses look for platforms that can evolve without disruption.

For organisations running websites on Umbraco, this pattern has been familiar, each release offering a more polished experience for editors and a smoother development journey for teams.

With the launch of Umbraco 17, the latest Long-Term Support (LTS) version, another important milestone in the CMS evolution. Unlike a complete overhaul, this release is a strategic continuation of what has made Umbraco trusted for years - usability, flexibility, and long-term reliability.

Why Umbraco 17 Matters

Umbraco 17 marks the next LTS milestone after version 13. Projects built on Umbraco 13 can directly upgrade to 17, with automatic handling of all intermediate migrations. That means no incremental upgrades and smoother transitions, a major benefit for enterprises prioritizing longevity and product lifecycle clarity.

Built on .NET 10 LTS, Umbraco 17 provides a future-ready and secure foundation with support available until late 2028. This alignment with Microsoft’s official support timeline gives businesses predictability for planning, compliance, and scalability.

The Major Advancements in Umbraco 17

1. Load-Balanced Backoffice

   Umbraco 17 introduces true back-office load balancing, enabling editors across large organisations and regions to work simultaneously without performance bottlenecks or content conflicts. This update particularly benefits long-running tasks and real-time features like SignalR.

2. Consistent UTC Date & Time-Zone Handling

   Earlier Umbraco versions relied on server-local time, which caused issues across global deployments and daylight-saving variations.

   Umbraco 17 fixes this permanently:

   All system dates are stored in UTC

   A built-in migration converts historical data

   A new Date-Time (with Time Zone) property improves scheduling and workflows

3. Improved Backoffice UI & Editor Experience

   Umbraco continues refining its editorial experience with meaningful enhancements such as:

   Clearer entity icons

   Enhanced navigation shortcuts

   More accessible interface

   Subtle speed improvements

   These refinements make routine content operations smoother, reducing friction for editors and enhancing productivity.

4. Stronger Extension Model

   Since the transition to the Bellissima back-office in v14, Umbraco has been moving toward a fully extensible foundation.

   In 17, extensions become first-class citizens a major win for stability, upgrade predictability, and reusable component development.

Umbraco 17 on Cloud: Built for Enterprise Scale

Umbraco 17 on Cloud is more powerful than ever, offering:

• Improved CI/CD tooling
• Hostname validation
• Central identity management
• Advanced bandwidth insights
• Reliable scaling for high-traffic environments

With Engage now aligned with the new back-office and equipped with Deploy support, moving personalization setups across environments is seamless.

Developer-Focused Enhancements

Umbraco 17 is not only about editorial convenience developers get substantial upgrades too:

• TipTap as the default rich-text editor
• Server-side preview URLs
• Optimised dependency layer for .NET 10
• Improved Models Builder performance

Together, these upgrades cut debugging time and give developers more productive workflows.

Installing Umbraco 17: A Quick Overview

For local development, you need:

• .NET 10 or later
• VS Code or Visual Studio 2022
• SQLite or SQL Server (min. SQL 2016)
• A modern browser like Chrome or Edge

Basic installation commands:

• dotnet new install Umbraco.Templates::17.0.0 --force
• dotnet new Umbraco --force -n "My Project"
• dotnet run --project "My Project"

Within minutes, you can have a fresh Umbraco 17 project running locally.

Why Consider Upgrading Now?

While Umbraco 13 LTS remains powerful today, Umbraco 17 offers long-term momentum fewer legacy dependencies, a modern back-office built for the future, and a secure foundation for the next three years.

Upgrading from 13 to 17 isn’t a redesign. You preserve:

• Content models
• Workflows
• Integrations

But gain access to:

• A modern technology stack
• Long-term support
• Faster performance
• Fewer plugin compatibility risks

For businesses on Umbraco 8 or 10, the path typically involves first upgrading to 13 and then moving to 17 a proven and safe strategy to modernize.

The Future of Umbraco Begins Here

Umbraco 17 does not try to reinvent the CMS it refines it. It feels faster, lighter, and more dependable, especially for organisations with high editorial demand or multi-regional operations.

The real value of this release goes beyond version numbers it's about maturity, predictability, and long-term confidence.

Want to Learn Umbraco 17 Hands-On?

We recently hosted a full learning session covering:

• Installation
• Upgrades
• Major new features
• Practical usage examples

If you want the complete step-by-step walkthrough,

Watch the full walkthrough on our YouTube channel. Link is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avPyj6IR2Xo&t=2s

More Umbraco learning content and technical deep dives coming soon.

If you’d like expert support with planning, upgrading, or developing on Umbraco 17, our team is here to help from assessment to migration to performance optimisation. Or else if you would like any Umbraco CMS services for your business let’s connect.

Mitesh Patel - Technical Head - ADDACT

Sitecore || XMCloud || OrderCloud Certified

Mitesh, a distinguished Technical Head at Addact/Addxp, is a prominent figure in Sitecore/XMCloud/OrderCloud certified writing. From Sitecore XM Cloud Developer Certification to Sitecore 10 .NET Developer Certification and Sitecore OrderCloud Certification, Mitesh's expertise is unparalleled. Mitesh is not only a skilled Sitecore CMS developer but also a 12+ years experienced software engineer proficient in various technologies such as MVC, ASP.Net, C#, jQuery, and Azure cloud/AWS.