API Platform Conference 2026 - Nicolas Grekas - The PHP runtime I want to see

This talk is about the runtime I would like PHP to have, and the steps I think get us there. For twenty years PHP has worked the same way: one request, one process, and then everything is forgotten. That model is the reason PHP is simple, robust, and easy to deploy. It is not the problem. The problem is everything it cannot do. Nothing can wait, watch, or remember between requests. So we built cron jobs, supervisors, TTLs and Redis keys around it, to make up for one missing capability. This…