Too Long; Didn't Read
Laravel 9 was released on the 8th of February 2022 and includes many new features. The latest release only goes with the minimum version of PHP 8.0. This means if your laravel application is in Laravel 8 or older version you might need to upgrade your PHP version before upgrading the application. The following are major updates in L9: Shift from swift mailer to symfony mailer, upgrade of the file system to file system 3 x. x.4.