MySQL at 30 – does it still have a future? [Q&A]

Last year MySQL marked its 30th birthday, but with end of life for the current version (8.0) coming up next month and moves towards a community edition what does the future hold for the platform?

We spoke to Peter Zaitsev, founder of database support specialist Percona, to discuss what MySQL users should be doing now and whether there’s still life in the old database yet.

BN: MySQL celebrated 30 years of development in 2025 — how important do you think this database is within the wider world of technology? Is it still relevant today?

PZ: MySQL is still extremely important to companies worldwide. It powers a lot of the modern web as we know it today — it’s the standard database for WordPress, which is the content management system for 60 percent of all websites. Almost any serious enterprise will have at least some apps with MySQLproviding the backend. Databases are generally very sticky and even as a specific database itself may become less popular for new development, it is still used for decades — Oracle is a great example here. While PostgreSQL is the darling of the day when it comes to Open Source relational databases, I would not sell MySQL short — it still has significant mindshare.

BN: There’s a big end of life coming for MySQL 8.0 in April 2026 — do you think that those using MySQL are paying attention to this date? How does this compare to previous editions?

PZ: EOL dates for old versions of software come around regularly. The specific date should not be a big deal, though you need to pay attention to it as you do not want to run unsupported and un-patched database software these days. With MySQL, many of those running this database have had to go through this fairly recently — MySQL 5.7 going EOL was a big deal, due to how different the next version (MySQL 8) was in comparison and therefore how difficult migration was. Moving to MySQL 8.4 is not as significant as it is a more incremental release.

There are some companies that are still holding out and running MySQL 5.7 today — for those organizations, the update will be a bigger amount of work to get completed.

BN: What would you say about the community around MySQL today? Is it still a healthy one?

PZ: I think the recent track record is mixed. On one side, there are still a lot of books about MySQL being published, and support of MySQL in different programming languages, frameworks and tools tends to be great. Yet we also see less of the user activity — meetups, conferences etc, compared to previous years and compared to, for example, PostgreSQL.

While I think some of this can be connected to Oracle’s stewardship of MySQL, and how that has affected the community over time, another part of the story is the explosion in the number of databases in general and Open Source databases in particular, which means there are many more projects out there that compete for people’s attention. You can see this at FOSDEM 2026 — one of the biggest Open Source conferences in the world — neither MySQL nor PostgreSQL got a track this year, but it was rather all wrapped up into a single ‘Databases’ track. There is a lot of innovation going on across all those new and existing databases, but it is getting lumped into one track. That will mean that there is not as much time to go into all the cool stuff that is taking place in these projects.

BN: Where would you like to see future development of MySQL go, and what can the community as a whole do around this?

PZ: First, I believe competition is great for innovation, so I do not agree with folks saying, “We do not need MySQL, we need PostgreSQL.” Keeping MySQL healthy will benefit you even if you will use PostgreSQL. And some of the loudest opinions around MySQL are from those with out of date perceptions around MySQL as a database, which means that some that would otherwise join and enjoy the community think that it is not for them.

The situation with MySQL has been unfortunate as Oracle has been ‘boiling the frog’ over last few years. While they have not done something drastic like changing the open source license for MySQL Community Edition, they have been gradually reducing resource allocation to MySQL Community and rather focusing on the Cloud-only MySQL Heatwave. This culminated in reportedly 75 percent of the engineering team around MySQL being dismissed in Fall 2025, which will have a drastic impact on the speed of MySQL development and even quality of maintenance. I believe this is a very important signal for the community as a whole, and especially big MySQL users. It should provide the impetus to get together and ensure our future is not dependent on Oracle’s mercy.

BN: Any other thoughts on MySQL as we go through 2026?

PZ: I think 2026 will be a transformational year for MySQL. We’re not looking just to complain about the sorry state of MySQL affairs and wait for someone else to fix it. We’re gathering together all the folks that are invested in the future of MySQL at several impartial Summits for the MySQL Community in both the Bay Area in the US and around FOSDEM in Europe. This will bring the MySQL community involvement with MySQL to a new level, where everyone can get involved and have a say on how the future goes. So far, the response has been overwhelming and we’re very hopeful about reigniting MySQL Community activity so everyone can benefit. We have seen the community around Redis achieve similar results in bringing people together to work on future roadmaps, and there is a community that is just as invested in MySQL too.

MySQL has a valid role to play in the technology industry. It has been fast to implement and easy to use, and it fills a great role alongside other open source databases. It needs people who are passionate about building new things around MySQL, whether that is vector search or new binlog support that the community has asked for in the past. Getting contributions from the whole community will make the project stronger, and encourage more individuals and companies to get involved.

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