The Babel team ships version 8 after eight years, during which weekly downloads grew from 1.7M to 651M, focusing on three changes rather than new features. Babel is now ESM-only and needs Node.js 22+, no longer compiles to ES5 by default but targets modern browsers via Browserslist, and drops the broad loose and spec options for assumptions you enable one tradeoff at a time.
Releasing Babel 8 today: ESM-only, drop ES5 default, and a smooth migration path
