The Spring Framework is a popular, free and open-source application framework for the Java platform. Spring was created by Rod Johnson in 2002 to provide some alternatives to the complexity of the Java Enterprise (Java EE) platform. It is now a vast ecosystem with many modules that support a wide range of application scenarios.

The Spring framework is actively maintained by VMWare, Inc.

As of April 2024, the latest and stable release of Spring framework is 6.1.6 released on April, 11^th 2024. This version requires Java Development Kit 17 as the minimum.

The following table shows the history of all Spring framework versions till date (note that only major verions are listed):

 

Version	Date	Minimum Java Version
Spring 0.9	June 2003	JDK 1.3
Spring 1.0	March 2004	JDK 1.3
Spring 2.0	October 2006	JDK 1.4
Spring 2.5	November 2007
Spring 3.0	December 2009	JDK 5
Spring 3.1	December 2011
Spring 3.2	November 2013
Spring 4.0	December 2013	JDK 6
Spring 4.2	July 2015
Spring 4.3	June 2016
Spring 5.0	September 2017	JDK 8
Spring 5.3	October 2020
Spring 6.0	November 2022	JDK 17
Spring 6.1.1	November 2023
Spring 6.1.6	April 2024

 

Note that the versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x reached its official EOL (end-of-line), which means no further maintenance and security patches planned.

Spring framework 5.3.x is the final branch of the 5^th generation and still active.

Spring framework 6.1.x is the main production line as of April 2024.

That means by 2024, you can use the branches 5.3.x or 6.1.x to develop Spring-based applications.

Watch the video below to see Spring framework version history in more visual manner:

 

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