Vue.js – 2025 In Review and a Peek into 2026

Introduction

Vue.js has solidified its standing in the frontend world throughout 2025. In 2025, Vue’s ecosystem demonstrated both maturity and momentum: major tools reached stable milestones, performance improvements were unveiled, and adoption continues to climb.

Surveys show an overwhelming 93% of developers plan to use Vue for their next project, with 80% “definitely” choosing it again (up from 74% a few years ago). This speaks to the strong satisfaction and loyalty in the Vue community, even as React still leads in overall mindshare.

Core Library Changes in 2025

While 2025 hasn’t seen a lot of changes to Vue core, Vue 3.6 is still being actively worked on behind the scenes with performance taking a front seat. Vue 3.5 (the current stable release in 2025) already brought solid improvements, but the Vue team has also previewed Vue 3.6 which focuses on a “massive reactivity performance improvement” according to Evan You. (Not to mention a focus on faster tooling with Vite, see more below).

The reactivity system – the heart of Vue’s responsiveness – is being optimized in 3.6 to make updates more efficient using alien signals. These low-level boosts mean smoother UIs, especially in the largest of applications.

Nuxt 3 to Nuxt 4 Transition

After a long development cycle, Nuxt 4.0 was officially released in mid-2025. This major update focused on polish and developer experience, introducing a cleaner project structure (app/ directory), smarter built-in data fetching, improved TypeScript support, and a faster CLI.

The Nuxt team deliberately made Nuxt 4 a stability-focused release with minimal breaking changes, as many features had already been gradually rolled out in Nuxt 3 minor releases.

Nuxt 4 cements Nuxt’s role as the full-stack meta-framework for Vue, and sets the stage for Nuxt 5 (planned to follow once the new Nitro backend engine v3 is ready).

Nuxt Labs – the company behind Nuxt – was bought by Vercel and prompted the free release of previously premium tools like including Nuxt Studio and Nuxt UI Premium.

State Management – Pinia 3

Vue’s official state library **Pinia** is still the go to state management solution in 2025. Pinia’s API has remained stable and intuitive, and with its latest version 3 it dropped support for Vue 2, reflecting the community’s complete migration to Vue 3.

Developers can continue to define stores with defineStore and use state/getters/actions just as before – the primary change is simply the end of legacy support, simplifying the ecosystem around a single, Vue-3-optimized state solution.

By now, virtually all Vue projects have embraced Pinia for state management, given its lightweight nature and excellent TypeScript integration.

Vue Router Advances

The official Vue Router grew more powerful. Over 2024 and 2025 it introduced highly anticipated features like native View Transition API support (enabling smooth page transitions using the new browser API) and a now stable Data Loading API for handling route data fetching at the router level.

The support for typed routes is also a great addition to the library.

Vite and the Tooling Ecosystem: Vite

The lightning-fast build tool created by Evan You – became even more integral to Vue development. Vite’s core saw major releases (v6 in late 2024 and v7 in June 2025) focusing on foundational capabilities like the new Environment API (to standardize how code runs in client vs server vs edge).

Under the hood, the Vue community is eagerly anticipating Vite’s move to a unified Rust-powered toolchain for bundling and transpilation. Evan You launched a new venture, Void(0) (VoidZero), with $4.6M in funding to develop next-gen JavaScript tooling and announced Vite Plus at the first ever Vite Conf in October. Vite Plus promises to be an all in one development tooling solution for speed at scale with bundling from Rust based Rolldown, linting with OxLint and more.

Vue Adoption and Popularity

Vue’s usage continued its upward trend. NPM download stats show Vue firmly in second place among front-end frameworks – about 6.4 million weekly downloads, nearly double its weekly downloads from 2022. React still dominates with 32 million/week, but Vue’s growth (37% year-over-year, according to Evan You) is impressive for a framework now a decade old. In other metrics, Vue maintains high satisfaction and has even surpassed React in total GitHub stars, reflecting its passionate community.

However, interest on Google Trends for Vue has been relatively stable or slightly declining in recent years (with Vue trailing React and Angular in worldwide search interest). This suggests that while Vue isn’t making explosive headlines, it has entrenched itself as a reliable, mature choice with steady adoption.

Looking Ahead to 2026 (Predictions)

What does the Vue ecosystem have in store for 2026? Given the developments in 2025, we can expect the coming year to bring evolutionary improvements rather than radical shifts – with a focus on performance, stability, and integrating new technologies. Here are some predictions for 2026 based on current trends:

• Vue Core – Vapor Mode & Performance: The long-awaited Vapor Mode will likely land in 2026 as a game-changer for Vue performance.
• Unified Toolchain with Vite Plus: The unified build tool free for small businesses and with a flat annual fee for enterprise will probably emerge from early access.
• Nuxt + Nitro 3: We also expect Nitro 3 (the new server engine for Nuxt) to be finalized, likely packaged with new features like scheduled cron jobs and more for Nuxt 5 in 2026.
• AI Integration in Workflows: The impact of AI on development will deepen. By 2026, it’s plausible we’ll see AI-assisted code generation integrated into Vue/Nuxt CLI or GUI tools or more rules bundles like Eduardo’s Vue RuleKit.
• Community & Jobs Outlook: In 2026, the Vue community should remain vibrant but with a heavier focus on AI driven development skills paired with it.

In summary, 2026 for Vue looks bright. Rather than a radical overhaul, it will be about refinement and expansion: making Vue apps faster and easier to build, leveraging new tooling (often powered by Rust and AI) to improve developer productivity, and growing the community in new domains. Vue’s core ethos – approachability, versatility, and performance – is set to continue, which bodes well for developers who have invested in the Vue ecosystem.

Bring on 2026! 🚀

Vue.js enters 2026 from a position of strength. The framework is now truly battle-tested in everything from small personal projects to large enterprise systems. Its ecosystem (Vue core, Nuxt, Vite, Pinia, and beyond) is both stable and innovative, a combination that ensures developers can rely on Vue for critical work while also enjoying improvements over time. The focus on developer experience and performance, combined with Vue’s pragmatic evolution, suggests a promising year ahead.

Whether you’re a seasoned Vue expert or just considering Vue for your next project, 2026 will offer even better tools, faster builds, and a supportive community to help you succeed. The “Vueniverse” continues to expand, and there’s never been a better time to be a Vue developer – or to become one. Here’s to a fantastic year ahead in the Vue ecosystem! 🎉