As of 1.35, the latest stable release requires 7.3: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requirements#PHP https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:In

As of 1.35, the latest stable release requires 7.3: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requirements#PHP https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requireme... 1.34 is the trailing legacy release and requires 7.2.9 or newer. 1.31 LTS, supported into 2021, requires 7.0 or later. In releases since 1.27 introduced PHP 7 support, the backward version compatibility has been tightening up more aggressively. PHP 7 brought a ton of performance gains that MW had previously relied on HHVM for, which gave them a lot of reasons to shed PHP 5 and start turning more forward-looking.