July 10, 2026

Drizzle ORM v1, Next.js 16.2 and Vite 8

The TanStack Start and Next.js starter kits are updated to Drizzle ORM v1 with the new relations API and migration engine, Next.js 16.2, and Vite 8 with Rolldown and Nitro v3.

Posted by

Eelco Wiersma

@eelcodotdev

Big week for both starter kits. The TanStack Start and Next.js starter kits have been upgraded to Drizzle ORM v1 (1.0 RC) with the brand new relations API and migration engine. On top of that, the Next.js starter kit now runs on Next.js 16.2, and the TanStack Start starter kit moved to Vite 8 with the Rolldown bundler and Nitro v3.

What's new?

Drizzle ORM v1 — no more migration merge conflicts

Both starter kits now ship with Drizzle ORM 1.0.0-rc and the matching Drizzle Kit release. Two things stand out in this upgrade:

A completely redesigned migration engine. The old setup tracked all migrations in a single journal.json file, which was a constant source of merge conflicts — every branch that touched the database schema modified the same file. This got especially painful with AI-generated PRs, where multiple branches routinely add migrations in parallel. The new engine drops the journal file entirely: each migration lives in its own folder, and Drizzle Kit now detects conflicting (non-commutative) migrations across branches instead of blowing up your git history. Parallel schema work finally merges cleanly.

The new relations API (v2). Defining and querying relations is now more intuitive and more powerful. All schemas and queries in the starter kits have been migrated to the new API, so you get idiomatic v1 code out of the box.

If you're upgrading an existing project based on one of the starter kits, Drizzle makes the transition straightforward:

pnpm add drizzle-orm@rc && pnpm add -D drizzle-kit@rc
pnpm drizzle-kit up

The drizzle-kit up command converts your existing migrations folder to the new structure. If you use Drizzle's relational queries, you'll also need to update your relation definitions to the v2 API — check the official v1 upgrade guide for the details.

Next.js 16.2

The Next.js starter kit is now running on Next.js 16.2, which is mostly about speed and developer experience:

Much faster dev startup — next dev gets to a ready localhost:3000 significantly faster than 16.1
25–60% faster server rendering thanks to a React change that speeds up Server Components payload deserialization
Better debugging — Server Function logging in the dev terminal, a clear hydration diff indicator in the error overlay, and error cause chains
Redesigned default error page and over 200 Turbopack fixes

The upgrade required no code changes in the starter kit. For your own projects, the automated upgrade CLI does the heavy lifting:

pnpm dlx @next/codemod@canary upgrade latest

Vite 8 with Rolldown and Nitro v3

The TanStack Start starter kit now builds with Vite 8, the biggest architectural change to Vite since v2. Vite now uses Rolldown, a Rust-based bundler that replaces both esbuild and Rollup, delivering 10–30x faster production builds. Combined with Nitro v3 powering the server layer, dev server startup, HMR and production builds are all noticeably snappier.

The migration is mostly seamless: Vite 8 ships a compatibility layer that automatically converts existing esbuild and rollupOptions configuration, so most projects upgrade without config changes. Make sure you're on Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+.

Getting started

All updates are available now on the main branch of both starter kits. Pull the latest changes, run your package manager's install, and regenerate your database migrations with drizzle-kit to get going.