If Drupal 7 to 11 is a portage, 10 to 11 is stepping from the dock into the boat — as long as the dock is in good repair. Drupal 10 reaches end of life December 9, 2026, so this is the year to take the step.

Why it’s genuinely easier

Ten and eleven share modern foundations. For a well-kept site the upgrade is: update contrib modules to 11-ready releases, clear deprecated API usage from custom code, meet the platform requirements (PHP, database versions), and step up. Tooling reports most of it automatically. No content migration, no theme rebuild — evolution, not surgery.

The catch: “well-kept” is doing the heavy lifting

The sites that struggle are the ones where updates stopped years ago — where the real project isn’t 10-to-11, it’s the accumulated debt underneath. Contrib pinned to old branches, custom code nobody’s touched, a composer.json held together with hope. The upgrade exposes the debt; it didn’t create it.

The sensible sequence before December

Run the compatibility report now; update contrib now (good hygiene regardless); budget the custom-code cleanup honestly; then schedule the step itself with margin before the deadline rather than during the holiday freeze. Sites on our maintenance program get the deprecated-API watch as standing coverage, which is why their Decembers are boring — the whole point of maintenance is that deadlines arrive pre-handled.