The History of Joomla (and Mambo)

The story of Joomla begins long before the name "Joomla" existed. It starts with Mambo, a closed-source content management system built in Melbourne, Australia, by Miro Construct Pty Ltd around the year 2000. The founder, Peter Lamont, and his team saw an opportunity to build a powerful web platform. In April 2001, Mambo was released under the GPL on SourceForge, opening the door to community contribution.

The Mambo Years (2001–2005)

Under the GPL, Mambo quickly grew. Robert Castley became Project Director and assembled a volunteer development team. Mambo Open Source 4.0 was released around 2002, followed by the landmark version 4.5 in December 2003 — a near-complete rewrite that established Mambo as a serious platform. Linux Format named it "Best Free Software Project" of the year. Mambo 4.5.1 followed in September 2004, with 4.5.1a as a maintenance release in October of that same year.

In late 2004, Robert Castley stepped down and Andrew Eddie took over as Project Leader. Joomla's co-founders — Andrew Eddie, Brian Teeman, Johan Janssens, Jean-Marie Simonet and others — were all deeply embedded in Mambo at this time, shaping the platform that would become the foundation of what came next.

In August 2005, Miro International announced the Mambo Foundation, but did so without meaningful community input. The entire core development team publicly resigned within days. Working under the banner of "Open Source Matters", they regrouped, and on 22 September 2005 the name Joomla! was announced — an anglicised spelling of the Swahili word jumla, meaning "all together".

Joomla 1.0 — The First Fork (2005–2007)

Joomla 1.0 was released on 16 September 2005, initially almost identical to Mambo 4.5.2.3. The release was led by Andrew Eddie, with the full former Mambo core team. Patch releases followed throughout 2006 and 2007 — 1.0.1 through 1.0.15 — each addressing security issues and bugs from the rapid community adoption. At this point Joomla was growing explosively; hundreds of thousands of sites were being built on the platform.

Joomla 1.5 — The Modern Foundation (2008–2012)

Joomla 1.5 was a landmark release — a near-complete architectural rewrite led by Andrew Eddie and Louis Landry. Released on 22 January 2008, it introduced a proper MVC framework, a new plugin system, and vastly improved extensibility. It became the most widely used version in Joomla's history, with 1.5.1 through 1.5.26 tracking its lifecycle all the way to March 2012.

Joomla 1.6, 1.7, and 2.5 — The Access Control Era (2011–2014)

Joomla 1.6 arrived in January 2011, led by Louis Landry, bringing the long-awaited full Access Control List (ACL) system and a user-defined category hierarchy. It was short-lived but pivotal. Joomla 1.7 followed in July 2011 with enhanced security, led by Sam Moffatt. The stable evolution of this work culminated in Joomla 2.5, released on 24 January 2012, the last Long-Term Support release before the 3.x series. Release lead for 2.5 was Andy Wallace.

Joomla 3.x — Bootstrap and Bootstrapping a Community (2012–2023)

Joomla 3.0, released on 27 September 2012, brought Bootstrap-based responsive templates and PostgreSQL support. The 3.x series became Joomla's longest-running major version, spanning 3.0 through 3.10.12, with the series finally reaching End of Support in August 2023. Key release leads over the years included Kyle Ledbetter (3.0), Michael Babker, Jennifer Gress, and Harald Leithner (notably as solo release lead for 3.9.3 onwards). Joomla 3.10, released in August 2021, served as the bridge release to Joomla 4.

Joomla 4.0 — The Reboot (2021–2025)

Joomla 4.0 was released on 17 August 2021 after years of development, led by George Wilson. It dropped PHP 5 support, removed legacy code, introduced a Dependency Injection Container, and laid a modern foundation. Benjamin Trenkle led 4.1 (the last single-person release lead), and from 4.2 onwards release management became a two-person role: Franciska Eichert & Roland Dalmulder (4.2), Shirielle Williams & Olivier Buisard (4.3), Allon Moritz & Martin Kopp (4.4). Joomla 4 reached End of Support on 17 October 2025.

Joomla 5.0 — The Next Chapter (2023–2027)

Released on 17 October 2023, Joomla 5.0 was led by Harald Leithner and Benjamin Trenkle. It required a higher minimum PHP version, removed legacy compatibility shims, and introduced Schema.org integration. A backward-compatibility plugin eased the transition for extensions and templates. Subsequent minor versions were led by: Luca Rachetti & Martina Scholz (5.1), Peter Martin & Marc Dechevre (5.2), Tom van der Laan (5.3), and Richard Fath & Heiko Lübbe (5.4). Joomla 5 is supported until October 2027.

Joomla 6.0 and 6.1 — Today (2025–)

Joomla 6.0 launched on 14 October 2025, led by Philip Walton and Gary Barclay. It removed the backward-compatibility plugin permanently, added automatic updates, and marked a clean break from the legacy Joomla 4 era. Joomla 6.1 followed on 14 April 2026, led by Harald Leithner and Stefan Wendhausen, adding Proof-of-Work CAPTCHA, a graphical workflow editor, and new media custom fields. Joomla 6 is supported until October 2029.

This article was prepared as part of the Joomla Community Contributors Value dataset for The Value Project. The transfer amounts credited to each release manager reflect the community's recognition of their contribution to one of the world's most widely used open-source content management systems.