This article is based on Minko Gechev’s live talk at Angular Day 2025. Minko Gechev leads Angular's technical team and developer relations at Google. He wrote the popular book "Switching to Angular" and has won many awards for his work. His home country Bulgaria and Google have both honored him for his open-source projects.

As we look toward Angular's next chapter, this article breaks down the framework's journey, current capabilities, and exciting plans for 2025.

The Angular Journey

According to Minko, in 2016, two big things happened: the speaker moved from Bulgaria to Silicon Valley, and Angular launched its new version! Both changes came with challenges. Minko came to the US knowing almost no one. He even had trouble getting money for food in his first days!

Angular's story started in 2010 with AngularJS. In 2016, it changed to Angular 2. This switch wasn't easy and the team tried many different ways to make things work better. Now, in 2025, things are different. Angular has grown stronger.

Three key lessons stand out in Minko’s journey, and this is how we’ll divide this article too (plus, in the end, we have a section for Angular 19 and its future.)

1. Setting boundaries
2. Building relationships
3. Learning and iterating

Setting Boundaries and Vision

Let’s start with what boundaries are. As Minko says: “Boundaries are not there to be rigid or uncaring. They're there about honoring your own needs and limits so that you can provide the love that others deserve.”

Setting limits isn't about building walls. It's about making smart choices that help you serve others better. For Angular, this means being clear about what the project should and shouldn't do. The team gave Angular a sharper focus. They changed their motto from "one framework for mobile and desktop" to "deliver web apps with confidence." This new goal puts web developers first.

The Angular team set up two main ways to stay on track:

1. They made a clear process for handling new feature requests
2. They checked if new ideas matched Angular's goals

The team worked on important updates that matched their new focus:

• Adding signals to improve how Angular handles data
• Making changes to how Angular works with RxJS
• Taking care of old feature requests that fit their goals

These updates helped make Angular better at what it does best - helping developers build great web apps.

Building Relationships and Ecosystem

“Community members are an incredibly valuable part of what makes Angular the product that it is.”

Success in big projects comes from teamwork. While writing good code matters, working well with others is just as important. The Angular team learned this lesson and made it a key part of how they work. Now the team puts a lot of work into building strong team bonds. They make sure everyone:

• Knows where the project is going
• Agrees on what needs to be done
• Works together smoothly

Also, Angular works with many great tools in the JavaScript world. They team up with Cypress, Playwright, Puppeteer and more companies to help make Angular even better for developers.

As Minko highlighted, thousands of people help make Angular better, too. They work on the main Angular framework, Angular CLI and Angular components. These helpers make some of the biggest and most helpful changes to Angular!

Last but not least, the Angular team works with other framework creators, too. They:

• Worked with Evan You to add Vite to Angular CLI
• Talk with other teams about signals
• Help create browser standards that work for everyone

Feature Development Process

“Being very intentional about the changes that we're shipping to the framework is critical for Angular success.”

The Angular team starts by finding out what developers really need. They talk to developers who use Angular in big and small companies, read feedback on GitHub and social media, meet developers at events and meetups, watch what's new in the tech world and run yearly surveys to get input from thousands of developers.

As Minko mentions, after collecting ideas, the team follows these steps:

1. Prioritize Features: We pick which features to work on based on team size and what will help most developers.
2. Make Prototypes: We build test versions to make sure new ideas can work. Many of our features are brand new to the web, so we need to prove they're possible.
3. Ask for Feedback: We share our ideas with developers to see if we're on the right track.
4. Test with Users: We ask developers to try our new features and tell us what works and what doesn't.
5. Developer Preview: We release an early version that's almost ready but might still change.
6. Stable Release: After testing and fixing issues, we release the final version.

This process helped us create many great features like standalone components, faster builds with esbuild, signals, deferrable views, new control flow, branch refresh in version 17, zoneless in version 18, better page loading in version 19, and more.

The team keeps using this careful process to make sure every new feature helps developers build better apps.

Angular 19 Features

Angular 19 makes apps start faster with a smart loading system.

With incremental hydration:

• Apps begin with no JavaScript loaded
• Components get JavaScript only when needed
• Users see pages quickly
• Easy to add with a simple code block

There are also flexible server routes. The new server route settings let you pick how each page loads, choose between client, server, or pre-built pages, set up page parameters and build pages ahead of time.

Angular 19 has new tools to make apps more responsive:

• Stable signal tools
• New ways to handle data
• Better input and output systems
• Tools to update old code

Also, Angular 19 adds helpful features like linked signals for data handling, resource feature for API calls, new data flow options, better async data tools and more. These updates make Angular apps faster and easier to build.

Final Thoughts

Angular keeps getting better by adding helpful new features, keeping old code working, staying up to date with web standards, and listening to what developers need. As web development changes, Angular stays modern while being reliable. It's ready to help developers build great apps today and tomorrow.

If you enjoyed Angular Day, make sure to subscribe to FrontEnd Nation, our biggest online and free conference, 3-5th of June with speakers like Kent C. Dodds, Angie Jones, Francesco Ciulla, Minko Gechev, and more.

Also, keep an eye on our YouTube channel, where we release all the talks from current and past conferences.