Divi 5 official release Feb 26, 2026; Divi 4 → 5 is one-way migration; rollback gets harder over time

Claim: Divi 5 entered beta November 2022; removed beta label February 26, 2026 — a 3+ year development cycle that disrupted customer projects. Elegant Themes documents Divi 4 storing "all layout data as shortcodes… [Divi 5] replaces shortcode-based layout storage with a new, more stable storage format" — migration is a one-way data conversion.

Quote (Elegant Themes Help Center):

"Switching from Divi 4 to Divi 5 is a one-way update via the Migrator… the longer you run Divi 5 and edit content, the harder a clean rollback becomes."

Source: https://elegantthemes.com/blog/divi-resources/how-to-migrate-your-website-to-divi-5; https://help.elegantthemes.com/en/articles/12767407-how-to-safely-migrate-from-divi-4-to-divi-5

Confidence: Verified.

The page-builder lock-in pattern made explicit. The vendor itself documents that rollback degrades over time — "the longer you run Divi 5 and edit content, the harder a clean rollback becomes." This is the architectural inverse of RULE: Require a working database export on Day 1 of any engagement. Test it. Re-test quarterly.. Pairs with Divi 4 stored content as proprietary et_pb_* shortcodes — orphan text on theme deactivation (Divi 5 fixes this) for the original architectural debt.