---
title: "Continuing to Move PHP Open Source Forward"
description: "Each year, PhpStorm selects five open-source projects to sponsor for a full year, providing financial support and raising awareness of open source in the PHP community. For this year, the chosen projects are PHPUnit, Lerd, static-php-cli, Composer, and Larabelles, selected from community suggestions based on their impact and need for financing. Sebastian Bergmann, creator and maintainer of PHPUnit, offers the most widely used testing suite for PHP. George Dumitrescu’s Lerd manages local PHP installations and servers, while Jerry Ma’s static-php-cli is used by FrankenPHP and Native PHP. PhpStorm continues its sponsorship of the PHP Foundation and encourages other organizations to contribute to open source, as every bit of support makes a substantial difference when added together."
---

# Continuing to Move PHP Open Source Forward

[Jetbrains](https://yomu.fyi/company/jetbrains) · Brent Roose · Sep 24, 2026

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

Each year, PhpStorm selects five open-source projects to sponsor for a full year, providing financial support and raising awareness of open source in the PHP community. For this year, the chosen projects are PHPUnit, Lerd, static-php-cli, Composer, and Larabelles, selected from community suggestions based on their impact and need for financing. Sebastian Bergmann, creator and maintainer of PHPUnit, offers the most widely used testing suite for PHP. George Dumitrescu’s Lerd manages local PHP installations and servers, while Jerry Ma’s static-php-cli is used by FrankenPHP and Native PHP. PhpStorm continues its sponsorship of the PHP Foundation and encourages other organizations to contribute to open source, as every bit of support makes a substantial difference when added together.

## Context

PhpStorm’s annual open-source sponsorship program selects five PHP projects each year to provide financial support and raise awareness. This post announces the new projects chosen for the current year.

## Approach / What changed

PhpStorm selects five open-source PHP projects annually from community suggestions based on their impact and need, providing financial sponsorship. It also continues sponsorship of the PHP Foundation and encourages other organizations to contribute.

## Takeaways

- PhpStorm sponsors five open-source PHP projects each year, selected from community suggestions.
- The 2024/2025 sponsored projects include PHPUnit, Lerd, static-php-cli, Composer, and Larabelles.
- PhpStorm also sponsors the PHP Foundation and urges other organizations to support open source.

## FAQ

### How are the sponsored projects selected?

Projects are chosen from community suggestions based on their impact and need for financing, with tough decisions made to select those that will have the biggest impact.

### What projects are being sponsored this year?

The five sponsored projects are PHPUnit, Lerd, static-php-cli, Composer, and Larabelles.

### Does PhpStorm support the PHP Foundation?

Yes, PhpStorm continues to sponsor the PHP Foundation and encourages other organizations to do so as well.

**Tags:** [Open Source](https://yomu.fyi/topic/open-source), [PHP](https://yomu.fyi/topic/php)

- Source: [Jetbrains](https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2026/09/continuing-to-move-php-open-source-forward)
- Source URL: https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2026/09/continuing-to-move-php-open-source-forward
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-24T12:00:13.157Z

[Read original post](https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2026/09/continuing-to-move-php-open-source-forward)