Sitecore XP 10.5

Sitecore XP 10.5 - a need to upgrade story

First of all, this is not a guide with 10.5 features. Those have been written already a lot just after the release. It's also not an easy yes/no wizard that will tell you if you need to upgrade. Because the answer will always be "it depends" and I'm pretty sure company blogs will cover this. 

This is the story. The story of a customer who is in doubt which direction to take right now and who has several departments with different requirements and demands. I'm telling the story as I learned during my visits to several Sugcon events that this might sound familiar to quite some people in the Sitecore community.

The current situation

The customer a running their website(s) on Sitecore for a very long time already. We are almost at 20 years - of yes, they started in the v5 era. Of course, there have been upgrades and one complete make-over. Ever since that make-over they have been upgrading regularly to keep everything up-to-date. But things changed - within the company, with Sitecore and also within the whole internet business. Everything became headless, Sitecore turned to XMCloud and now SitecoreAI. And to make things worse the world got a few war and our American friends didn't help to make everything more stable. With a customer in the energy sector this makes it very hard to make big decisions - like moving towards a headless platform which in their case would mean a new website again as you do not want to try and shift a 10 year old website including a lot of legac content.

   

Over the past years we have been talking to them about this move. And the customer is convinced it is needed - but the time hasn't been right yet. But as we were going to do this, we also stopped upgrading as this is expensive and wouldn't bring them much new. At the moment they are running on the latest Sitecore 10.2 on Azure PAAS with SXA, EXM, Sitecore Forms, custom .net code and indexes on SearchStax. We are still talking about moving to SitecoreAI and they are really looking forward to that... but the realistic voice tells them it's not going to be ready and done before the end of next year. 

The upgrade

Support

Why is this important?  Because customers are/were looking at the extended support dates. On the Sitecore support site you can check all the dates when support will end for a certain version, and for 10.2 that is end of 2027. As budget planning for 2027 is due soon, these decisions are being made now.  

There is one more very interesting mention on that page that people might have missed. On June 1st 2026 Sitecore made a change to their support types. Might sound minor, but it is not if you see what has shifted in the extended support (years 3 to 6 after release date) from included to payed:

• Assistance with production incidents
• Security updates and fixes

For the IT department of our customer, (security) updates are a big reason to upgrade. So this is important for them. So next to remaining on support, they will be happy to see that in 10.5 quite a few things got updated to newer versions:

• Windows Server 2025 (2022 still supported)
• SQL Server 2025 (2022 still supported)
• Solr 10 is now supported (and minimal), including Solr 10's mandatory Basic Authentication
• .NET Framework for the platform itself is up to 4.8.1
• Identity Server 9 runs on .NET 10

Next to that the security team will like the removal of outdated Javascript libraries and some significant security hardening. Note that especially the Solr is important here and needs some planning. It's a major change but as we are using SearchStax here it should not be an issue - just take into account this will be the first step to take.

Security effects 

Some of these security measures do have some impact. People upgrading should know that:

• The GraphQL playground is removed. You can use other tools like Postman or something similar against the endpoint instead.
• The package installer is disabled by default. It can be enabled again with the Sitecore.Packages.Disabled setting.

So far so good - IT team will be happy. 

Is there something in the upgrade for business people or editors?

The editor

There is. Do not expect new editors or any functional changes but there is a revamp or how Sitecore describes it:  

Sitecore XP 10.5 introduces a refreshed visual design across selected authoring experiences, including an updated color scheme and more consistent styling, with no functional changes to existing workflows.

Basically, the color scheme of SitecoreAI was set on the editors in Sitecore XP.  It's white and purple now but it will still work as the editors are used to. 

The modules

One important thing to consider in all of this is the use of Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA). At this moment - we are a few weeks after the release of 10.5 now - that module is not compatible yet. Meaning, there is no version for Sitecore 10.5 at this moment. It is mentioned on the release page that some modules (including SXA) are currently undergoing compatibility verification for Sitecore XP 10.5. Support for these modules will be introduced in upcoming module releases. If we check the compatibility matrix for the latest module support status we can see that there is no SXA for 10.5 yet - but we can be sure it is coming so it's a matter of time.  

And now?

The marketing department and the content editors of the customer will not be the drivers behind a new Sitecore upgrade here. The IT department however will be. Do they need to upgrade?

There are a few things to consider here. They are really considering moving to SitecoreAI. Actually, that is an understatement. They will move to SitecoreAI, they just don't know yet when. 

As we learned the new Sitecore version will not bring new features - unless you call new styling a feature. But that is nothing new. Most Sitecore customers on XM/XP are aware that they should not expect new features in new versions. It's all about support and (security) updates. Is this sufficient to do an upgrade? For some it will. 

Ok, enough vagueness. In our case for this customer the answer is yes. They always upgraded to remain supported and up-to-date, so the answer is yes - as soon as the modules are available. Upgrading now - hopefully really for the last time- is a good idea and will buy the time needed to do a proper transition to SitecoreAI.

I hope you learned something about Sitecore 10.5 and gained some insights in whether to upgrade or not. 

TL;DR

Remember, Sitecore support has changed policies and this might, should, will affect reasons to upgrade as for a long time now upgrades in the XM/XP sphere are triggered by compliance to support and security updates.