release: v12.0.0 major release (approx. Q3 2026)

[kamilmysliwiec]

PR Checklist

Please check if your PR fulfills the following requirements:

• The commit message follows our guidelines: https://github.com/nestjs/nest/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
• Tests for the changes have been added (for bug fixes / features)
• Docs have been added / updated (for bug fixes / features)

PR Type

What kind of change does this PR introduce?

• Bugfix
• Feature
• Code style update (formatting, local variables)
• Refactoring (no functional changes, no api changes)
• Build related changes
• CI related changes
• Other... Please describe: v12.0.0 release

Description

Approximate release window: early Q3 2026

Overview

1. ESM migration

   • All NestJS packages will transition from CommonJS (CJS) to ESM. The packages in this repository (core, common, etc.) have already been migrated. (build: migrate from cjs to esm #16369)
   • This should not introduce major breaking changes for existing projects thanks to Node.js require(esm) support.
   • The availability of require(esm) was the missing piece that made the move to ESM practical - without it, the migration wouldn't have made much sense. https://joyeecheung.github.io/blog/2024/03/18/require-esm-in-node-js/ https://nodejs.org/api/esm.html#require

2. CLI (ESM/CJS)

   • The NestJS CLI will prompt users to choose whether to generate a CJS or ESM project (ESM projects will use vitest + oxlint by default)
   • Webpack -> Rspack ✅ (webpack is now deprecated)

3. Testing stack changes

   • All repositories and sample projects will move from Jest to Vitest (with OXC for TypeScript decorator support). refactor: migrate from mocha, chai, sinon to vitest #16370 sample: migrate all samples to esm and vitest #16371 chore: upgrade to vitest 4 with oxc #16672
   • New ESM projects will use Vitest by default.
   • The CJS schematic will continue to use Jest.

4. Linter

   • All projects will now use oxlint instead of eslint by default chore: migrate to oxlint from eslint #16674

5. Website redesign

   • A complete redesign of the NestJS websites is coming soon - we're taking them to the next level.

6. Minor breaking changes

   • There will be a few minor breaking changes across other NestJS packages, but nothing significant.

7. Schema support in route decorators

   • All route decorators (e.g., @Body, @Query, etc.) will support a new schema option that accepts a Standard Schema–compatible object. https://standardschema.dev/)
   • This enables the use of modern validation libraries such as Zod, Valibot, ArkType, and others, as an alternative to class-validator.
   • The same capability will also be available in the serializer interceptor.

PRs:

• build: migrate from cjs to esm #16369
• refactor: migrate from mocha, chai, sinon to vitest #16370
• sample: migrate all samples to esm and vitest #16371
• refactor: minor codebase tweaks #16372
• feat: standard schema validation pipe, and standard serializer, introduce internal export subpath #16373
• feat(websockets): add disconnect reason parameter #16374
• feat(common): add error format option to validation pipe #16329
• Feat/express graceful shutdown #16156
• refactor: update pipe transform signatures for improved type safety #16147
• feat(common): allow passing errorCode in HttpExceptionOptions #15525
• feat(common): add generic for argument metadata #15413
• feat(microservices): nats v3 upgrade #15190
• refactor(core,express,fastify): HTTP adapter error mapping #15075
• feat(core): call hooks by components hierarchy level (order) #14900
• test(common): improve test coverage for shared utils #14832
• fix(core): make isHttpError check stricter #14753
• feat(common): add structured logging params support #16464
• Feat/microservices pre request hook v12 #16429
• chore: upgrade to vitest 4 with oxc #16672
• chore: migrate to oxlint from eslint #16674
• feat(microservices): add grpc exception filter #16945
• fix(microservices): support regex Kafka patterns #16943
• feat(websockets): request-scoped gateways #16949
• feat(core): add route conflict diagnostics and specificity ordering #16954

Packages will soon (possibly in Q2) be released under the next tag to let everyone play with them before they make it to the official latest tag.

Does this PR introduce a breaking change?

• Yes
• No

Other information

[elselapatha]

I know this question isn't specific to new vision , but for those using the Nestjs: better if we can have a first class support for the otel. is there any plan to give this support?

[rnkdsh]

any plans for the @nestjs/throttler and @nestjs/schedule packages?

[alekseyt]

Is it possible to also set tsc as a default compiler? This Rust stuff is actually unwanted. There is no point in using swc when reference compiler is tsc and given the fact that tsgo exists and will be new default in TS7, there are no practical reasons for using a slop-fork of sorts.

[pasha-vuiko]

Is it possible to also set tsc as a default compiler? This Rust stuff is actually unwanted. There is no point in using swc when reference compiler is tsc and given the fact that tsgo exists and will be new default in TS7, there are no practical reasons for using a slop-fork of sorts.

Where did you find something about tsc becoming to be not default?

[alekseyt]

Where did you find something about tsc becoming to be not default?

Hmm. I was looking if i can switch new tooling back to what was used before 12 and swc appeared somewhere in Google search results. It wasn't clear what compiler is default, so i looked into nest build --help:

Usage: nest build [options] [apps...]
...
  --webpack              Use webpack for compilation (deprecated option, use --builder instead).
  --tsc                  Use typescript compiler for compilation.

This makes it look like tsc isn't default. But after your question, i can see that documentation for cli/scripts (https://docs.nestjs.com/cli/scripts) is actually saying that nest build is a wrapper around tsc:

nest build is a wrapper on top of the standard tsc compiler or swc compiler (for [standard projects]

I guess i assumed incorrectly. Glad to be wrong if so.

[kamilmysliwiec]

tsc is and will remain the default

[gperdomor]

@kamilmysliwiec a quick question (maybe a dumb one 🤣), I was reviewing the zod example in the v12 branch, how should the DTOs inferred from the zod schemas be used with the swagger module to have proper models/dto/schemas definitions in the swagger interface?

[ekalkutin]

Any plans to release/publish @nestjs/cqrs package with EMS to match ^next version?

[Shashank-Salian]

@kamilmysliwiec Just curious, if ESLint is being replaced by Oxlint, why not replace prettier with Oxfmt ?
Keeping it in the same family of tools ?

[rezkid3labs]

Is NestJS 12 still on track to be released in Q3? @kamilmysliwiec

[13RTK]

Is NestJS 12 still on track to be released in Q3? @kamilmysliwiec

https://trilon.io/blog/nestjs-12-is-coming

[kraikov]

Any plans for TypeScript 7?

[pasha-vuiko]

Any plans for TypeScript 7?

@kraikov currently it is not possible to integrate as TS 7 lacks programmatic API which NestJS CLI relies on, it will be needed to wait till TS 7.1 lands with the new programmatic API support

[kraikov]

Any plans for TypeScript 7?

@kraikov currently it is not possible to integrate as TS 7 lacks programmatic API which NestJS CLI relies on, it will be needed to wait till TS 7.1 lands with the new programmatic API support

Hm, you could still use NestJS 12 with TS7, however, you won't be able to use the CLI, right?

[wonderbeel]

Any plans for TypeScript 7?

@kraikov currently it is not possible to integrate as TS 7 lacks programmatic API which NestJS CLI relies on, it will be needed to wait till TS 7.1 lands with the new programmatic API support

Hm, you could still use NestJS 12 with TS7, however, you won't be able to use the CLI, right?

You can use tsc instead of nest build to build directly but if you rely on a CLI plugin (eg, swagger to generate the openapi spec) that part will not work; you can already check this today, review your usage of the CLI and if you don't use it too much you can probably find alternative solutions/workaround (eg, you aren't using any CLI plugin, you can probably directly compile with tsc and do tsc + node -w for dev mode) but if you are deep into it your best bet will be to wait for typescript 7.1+.
Typechecking on the other hand should already be possible to do but just be careful that you have the 2 versions of typescript (typescript 7 that you install and typescript 5/6 for nest cli) not clashing by accident, depending on your package manager it could be simple to solve or way more involved.

[kraikov]

Any plans for TypeScript 7?

@kraikov currently it is not possible to integrate as TS 7 lacks programmatic API which NestJS CLI relies on, it will be needed to wait till TS 7.1 lands with the new programmatic API support

Hm, you could still use NestJS 12 with TS7, however, you won't be able to use the CLI, right?

You can use tsc instead of nest build to build directly but if you rely on a CLI plugin (eg, swagger to generate the openapi spec) that part will not work; you can already check this today, review your usage of the CLI and if you don't use it too much you can probably find alternative solutions/workaround (eg, you aren't using any CLI plugin, you can probably directly compile with tsc and do tsc + node -w for dev mode) but if you are deep into it your best bet will be to wait for typescript 7.1+. Typechecking on the other hand should already be possible to do but just be careful that you have the 2 versions of typescript (typescript 7 that you install and typescript 5/6 for nest cli) not clashing by accident, depending on your package manager it could be simple to solve or way more involved.

Thanks. I'm actually looking to bootstrapping a new project. For swagger I can go with schema-first (zod) so not a problem there.

[gperdomor]

Maybe can we use what Nx describe here https://nx.dev/docs/technologies/typescript/guides/typescript-7

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[oxvijay]

Can I start new projects using NestJS 12 now?

[vaskouk]

Hey. Will we also support bullmq v6 anytime soon ?