• It's a huge update, with many new features--but it's only an update (update 8), not a new version (there will be no CF2026, but there may be a CF2027)
• The update is available ONLY (for now) for CF2025, not also CF2023 (though that version is still supported and will get future updates)
• The new AI functionality may seem the most significant part of the update (and has hundreds of pages of documentation, but note that a) it's optional and b) is not installed by default with the update
• The update does include also updates to 53 of the CF packages, while also adding new packages (all related to AI, from one literally called AI to others related to the 4 kinds of vector stores)
• Beyond AI there are many other new and changed features, including language features, security features, and more
• Also, though not related to the update, per se, Adobe also released today an updated doc site. That will be worthy of my creating a separate post
• Also released today is a substantial new update to CF Builder, the VSCode extension. While some of what's new is related to the new AI functionality, there are other important improvements to CFBuilder that warrant attention by those who use it (and those who may have tried it and moved on due to challenges, many of which are addressed in this CFBuilder extension update). Again, this will be worthy of its own post.
• FWIW, I have applied the update to multiple machines so far on this first day, and I have experienced no problems/errors in applying the update

I had hinted at how large this update would be, in my recent post about the prerelease/beta for the update, which had been open for several weeks.

Because this is SUCH a substantial update, I can't easily list here ALL that's new. But I will highlight some of the key things, and I'll point to resources for you to learn more. Then I may do posts later that highlight some things I am interested in.

And like with each CF update I'll offer links to more about getting the update, finding more about it beyond the docs, and some issues that are common to applying any CF update, etc.

I offer the following sections below:

• Obtaining the update, as an update or via new installer
• Finding more about the update
• About new OS support: Windows 2025, macOS 26 Tahoe, and more
• About new security features
• About new language features
• About the new AI features
• About the important CFBuilder VSCode extension update
• About the CF docs site improvements
• Some current issues related to the update
• Other topics to consider, common to each CF update

Obtaining the update, as an update or via new installer

Obviously, with this being a CF update, it can be obtained either from within the CF Admin (on its "Package Manager" page), or by running the update from the command line with the "cfpm" tool, or the "java -jar" command running the available update jar file (link to that available via resources I mention in the next section).

But note as well that Adobe has come out with a new installer for CF2025, which includes update 8 already installed. You can download that via the CF2025 trial page. Those who have purchased CF2025 from Adobe also typically are given a link to download CF installers that way, and in time we can hope that the new installers will be available that way as well.

Finding more about the update

As for learning all about the update, including what's new and then links to still far more detail, see these pages to start:

• https://guides.adobe.com/coldfusion/en/docs/introduction-to-coldfusion/whats-new.html (with links to more details)
• Update 8 release notes (including bugs fixed and known issues)

Some readers may note that those URLs use the domain name guides.adobe.com. This is a reflection of the new CF doc site I alluded to at the outset. More on that later here.

As far as announcements of the new update, Adobe has so far offered one on their CF portal. Perhaps by tomorrow there will also be one at the Adobe CF Community forums, as there usually is.

And of course anyone visiting their CF2025 Admin after today would be notified via an icon on the top right that there was an available update--at least assuming the option was chosen on install of CF to have it check for updates. That can also be enabled after installation, via the "settings" tab at the top of the Admin "Package Manager" page.)

Finally, I'll note that Adobe CF Evangelist Mark Takata also announces things via the CFML Slack, and then sometimes also via the CF groups on Facebook and/or Linked. For links to those 3 resources and still other CF community help resources, see my category on those at cf411.com/cfsocialhelp.

Let's move on now to talk about what all is new with the update...it's a LOT. This is easily the biggest CF update ever. (It's not entirely clear why this was offered as an update rather than a new version, like CF2026, but it is what it is. We have had clarification publicly that there will be no CF2026 but instead a new release is planned for 2027.)

About new OS support: Windows 2025 and macOS 26 Tahoe, and more

Some people have been asking for months when CF2025 would support Windows 2025 and/or macOS 26 (or 16) Tahoe--both of which came out after CF2025 was released in Feb 2025. Good news is that this update adds support for these.

But since it's the original CF installer which fails when trying to run it on Windows 2025, note that you need to use the new installer (that was offered with this update, as discussed above), in order to install CF2025 on Windows 2025 (you can't add that support by "updating" CF2025). As for macOS, I'm not running it so can't confirm, but I would expect things to be the same. Again, see the previous section here on how to obtain the new installer.

Other seemingly new supported platforms include Postgres 18 (up from version 16 in the original CF2025 release) as well as Amazon Aurora Postgres 17 (up from 14 originally) and also Azure Cloud 16 up from 11 originally). Note also that RedHat 10.1 is now supported (up from RHEL 9 originally).

You can see more about what OS's and other platforms CF2025 supports, at the new version of the "support matrix" representing the state of things as of the update. You can compare it to the original CF2025 support matrix, but note that as for some of the other differences you may notice in those documents, be aware that some of the changes are not "new" with this update 8, but instead have been added in previous CF2025 updates.

Finally, note that even the new matrix document shows that CF2025 still supports only Java 21 (which is indeed an "LTS" release which gets updates from Oracle and the Java community). I'm just clarifying that CF2025 does not yet support any later Java versions, including Java 25 (the next most recent LTS release). Perhaps a future update or new version of CF2025 may add support for Java 25.

About new security features

Perhaps the next most compelling new thing for some users are a set of new capabilities being added in the realm of security. Note that this update adds support for

• Passkeys: "Add passwordless authentication to ColdFusion applications using the native WebAuthn and FIDO2 passkey APIs." More on the doc page on this feature
• Password hashing using Argon2, by way of new PasswordHashGenerate() and PasswordHashVerify() functions. More on this here

(A related "security" topic is a revamp of the ColdFusion Code Security Analyzer, which is a feature of the CFBuilder VSCode extension, which also got a substantial update--including important improvements for that security analyzer. More on the CFB update here later.)

About new language features

Let me quote the what's new doc: "ColdFusion 2025 update 8 adds native Sets with set theory operations, CompletableFuture-based async with asyncAllOf(), asyncAnyOf(), and timeout/combining methods, automatic CFML-to-Java functional interface adaptation, member functions on literals, and eight new or enhanced built-in functions".

It goes on to list several bullet points. See the section on these features, on that page. Most have a link to more detail.

About the new AI features

Finally as for the new AI features, again it's the most significant/substantial aspect of this update. I will keep it brief in nothing how it adds native AI and LLM integration, Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, vector stores, RAG, as well as other enhancements (including support of these things in the CF PMT monitoring tool and more).

Some readers may well be surprised that I didn't list this section before the others above. Well, it's that Adobe is CLEARLY making the AI feature set a major focus of the update, including the substantial docs about and multiple recent webinars about it.

But I know that some people will shrug at the addition of AI features to CF. I get it, some will call such people luddites, "get with the program, man!" But I know also that some people have concerns about AI and "won't touch it" or "won't be allowed to add it to CF" yet. Again, I know that Adobe would want to point out (and the docs do as well) how there are multiple "guardrails" related to the new AI feature set.

Note also that the new AI feature set is implemented as a package, called "AI", and interestingly it's NOT enabled by default when you apply this update 8. You would have to intentionally install that AI package (on the "package manager" page of the CF Admin or using the command-line cfpm tool).

You can learn more about the AI feature set, in multiple places:

• a VERY brief intro
• an entire new manual, with over 30 sections as indicated on the left nav bar
• a playlist of several Adobe webinars previewing the new update 8 features, with most being on the AI features

About the important CFBuilder VSCode extension update

You might think with the AI aspects covered, we're done with what's new in the update. Technically that's true.

But as I mentioned at the outset, release at the same time as this CF2025 update is a new update for the CFBuilder VSCode extension (which Adobe first released in 2023). While some aspects of the CFBuilder update are indeed specific to new/changed features from this CF2025 update 8, there are several other changes that will benefit even those who may not yet move to this update (or may be using CF2023).

Let me again just quote the what's new page: "The ColdFusion Builder VS Code extension now supports Linux and Docker (as a first-class server target with full RDS/debugger support), has a rebuilt context-aware CFML grammar that no longer breaks syntax highlighting on mixed-language files, adds code completions for AI, Cloud, and MongoDB services with deprecation warnings, and ships an improved Security Analyzer with new rules, better performance on large codebases, and PDF/CSV export."

For more on the CFBuilder extension update, see the docs page: ColdFusion Builder Extension for Visual Studio Code Update 5.

Note that if you may have VSCode configured to auto-download extension updates, you'll find that the update has already been installed the next time you visit the tool's extension feature. That said, note that if you had VSCode open when it detected the extension's update, the extensions feature in VSCode will indicate that you must restart the CFB extension for the change to take effect. (And of course, restarting VSCode will also achieve the same result.)

I am considering doing a separate post drawing out more on the CFB update.

About the CF docs site improvements

Finally, I've mentioned a few times that concurrent with the release of CF2025 update 8 (and CFbuilder update 5) Adobe has also released an updated CF docs site.

What's new about the new doc site? It fixes some LONG-standing issues with the Adobe CF docs website...which started after CF11, when Adobe corporate forced the CF team to move the voluminous (and deep) CF docs into a new doc management system.

Tragically, that new system (after CF11) supported only 3 levels of depth--and the CF docs (since the Allaire days, then into Macromedia, then into Adobe) were often SEVERAL levels deep. More tragically, this meant that even if a google search may take you to a page, that page may have only a paragraph or two...because it was supposed to be the section intro for a deeper set of pages to follow...but still more tragically, the new system (after CF11) didn't offer next/previous page links or even breadcrumbs, and often there would be no left nav bar. You would often literally be stick on what I called a doc "island".

Well great news: all those problems are addressed with the new CF docs site! There's also vastly improved search, including AI summaries.

The new URL again is guides.adobe.com, with this as the top-level page, which links to the several manuals (totaling thousands of pages if printed):

• Introduction to ColdFusion
• Install and configure ColdFusion
• CFML Reference (the classic doc that many mistakenly think is the ONLY Adobe CF documentation)
• ColdFusion AI Guide (obviously a new guide)
• ColdFusion tools (covering CFBuilder, the PMT, and the API Manager)
• Develop ColdFusion applications (itself thousands of pages if printed)
• Troubleshoot Issues (also a new guide)

You really owe it to yourself to dig into the new doc system: use the breadcrumbs, the next/previous page feature, the search feature, and more.

Is the new system perfect? Well, no. I found that sadly many of the left navbar list of subtopics were often in alpha order by their subtitles...when that may mean that the "intro" page for a chapter was buried within several other page titles. I hope that will improve over time.

Also, I fear there could be confusion in that the OLD doc urls still exists (such as for the CFML Reference and Deveopers Guide) and they STILL take one to the OLD doc pages...which have none of these new features. I hope that in time, Adobe will create redirects for all those old links, instead.

Some current issues related to the update

Beyond the "known issues" about the update discussed in the link I shared above, there are a fiew other issues to beware of that I and others have identified today regarding the update. These are things that may be fixed shortly, if Adobe agrees they are worth getting/able to be fixed.

• I've noticed that some of the text on the update's "what's new" doc page should clearly be going to some link "for more information", but many have no link. I've reported that and it's being worked on. Same with some other parts of the page, like some of the items in the "Other changes in the release"
• Speaking of that "Other changes in the release" section of the what's new doc, I'm noticing also that those with links go to pages that currently do NOT describe what's CHANGED about those features. Again, I have reported that and it's being worked on.
• I noticed that when viewing the update within the CF Admin, before installing it, the link it offers to the technote for the update currently fails. As such, folks can't readily (from that package manager page) see what's new, what's changed, what known issues there may be, etc. The link offered is this: https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/kb/coldfusion-2025-update-8.html, which gets an Adobe site 404 error. It seems the link should at least be the update's what's new page. Of some interest, note that AFTER you apply the update, THEN the link shown in the CF Admin package manager is instead http://www.adobe.com/go/cf2025_update8, and that DOES indeed redirect to that what's new page. That's a curious inconsistency.
• But a bigger question is why such a traditional update technote/kb article doesn't exist for this update. To be clear, changing that first "kb" URL from using update-8 to using update-7 DOES indeed work and gets the update 7 technote. I was told that this lack of an update-8 kb was intentional because this update is not a normal update...but I contend that (beyond the concern about the admin link shown before the update is applied), this will cause confusion for people who may try to find that url following the traditional pattern. More than that, as I raised in a comment on the CF Portal announcement (and Christopher raised as a comment below), the current "what's new" page doesn't include what such update technotes NORMALLY include, like the table of whether packages or the web server connector were updated. I'm hoping Adobe may reverse their decision and create a traditional update technote. (FWIW, the page listing CF2025 updates currently points to that "what's new" page", while all the other updates point to their corresponding traditional technote.).
• Moving on, someone has also noticed (and I confirmed) that even without the AI extension installed, we DO see (in the new AI section of the CF Admin) that the page for "vector stores" does appear and(unlike other pages in that section) it does NOT complain that "The ai package is not installed." It's not a grave concern, however: if you DO try to create a new vector store configuration, that WILL fail with that error (if the AI package is indeed not installed). That said, another related matter is that the coldfusion-out.log DOES show the "vector store service" starting, again even without the AI package installed. Adobe has been informed of this issue (And this is NOT one of the "known issues" listed in the "release notes" page I listed above, at least as of this writing.
• As I noted above, at least as I write this, there is not yet a post announcing the update in the CF community forums, like there usually would be.

I can't commit to tracking here all discovered issues (or their resolution), so again follow any/all of the CF community resources I've listed above to hear if there are public discussions of such matters related to the update.

Other topics to consider, common to each CF update

Finally, just as with ANY CF update, there are a few issues you should keep in mind. And I have covered them in previous blog posts about CF updates. While at some point I mean to create a new post pulling them out, for now let me point you to the PREVIOUS blog post I did about the April 2026 CF update.

• things to beware BEFORE doing any CF update
• how can you assess if the update went well?
• a few other topics generic to recent CF updates, which you may want to consider

Conclusion

So phew! That was quite a "CF update", right? Clearly the largest ever...and time may tell why Adobe felt it needed to be "an update" versus a "new release" (like CF2026). I do lament that there will be confusion for those on CF2023 (what aspect of this update will THEY get, and when?): for now, Adobe is mum on that.

But grumbles aside, this is indeed quite an update with a LOT for you to explore: not only all the AI stuff (whether you love it or hate it), but the many language improvements, the security-related improvements, the CFBuilder improvements, and more...not to mention the doc site improvements.

To quote Spock, "go forth and prosper". :-)

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