Tailwind CSS History & Versions

How Tailwind started

Adam Wathan had been building web apps with small, single-purpose CSS classes and wrote about "utility-first" CSS in 2017. Together with Jonathan Reinink, David Hemphill and designer Steve Schoger, he turned the approach into a framework. Tailwind CSS 0.1.0 was released on 1 November 2017.

The idea was controversial: putting dozens of classes in HTML looked like inline styles. But developers found it faster to build and safer to change, and with a carefully designed scale of spacing, colours and type it produced consistent designs. Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger founded Tailwind Labs, funded by commercial products such as Tailwind UI (now Tailwind Plus), while the framework stays free and open source (MIT).

Timeline

1. Tailwind CSS 4.3May 2026Current

   • scrollbar-*, zoom-* and tab-* utilities, @container-size, stacked and compound @variant
2. Tailwind CSS 4.2Feb 2026Supported

   • Mauve, olive, mist and taupe palettes, logical-property utilities (pbs-*, inline-*, inset-s-*), a webpack plugin
3. Tailwind CSS 4.1Apr 2025Supported

   • Text shadows, masks, drop-shadow-<color>, pointer variants, user-valid/user-invalid, @source inline()
4. Tailwind CSS 4.0Jan 2025Supported

   • New engine (much faster builds), CSS-first configuration with @theme, automatic content detection, OKLCH colours, container queries built in
5. Tailwind CSS 3.0Dec 2021Historic

   • The just-in-time engine always on, every colour by default, arbitrary properties, the Play CDN
6. Tailwind CSS 2.0Nov 2020Historic

   • Dark mode, an extended colour palette, ring utilities, the 2xl breakpoint
7. Tailwind CSS 1.0May 2019Historic

   • The first stable release
8. Tailwind CSS 0.1Nov 2017Historic

   • The first public release

How Tailwind changed CSS

• Utility-first went mainstream: Tailwind became one of the most used CSS frameworks, built into tools such as Laravel, Next.js starters and component systems like shadcn/ui.
• Just-in-time (2021): generating CSS on demand removed the huge development stylesheets and made arbitrary values (w-[37rem]) practical.
• CSS-first (2025): v4 moved configuration from JavaScript into CSS (@theme), embracing modern CSS features such as cascade layers, @property, color-mix() and container queries.

Version comparison

Which version should you use? v4 for new projects. Stay on v3.4 only if you must support older browsers.

Official resources

• Tailwind CSS documentation
• Tailwind CSS v4.0 announcement
• Upgrade guide
• Releases on GitHub

Last reviewed 21 October 2026. Release and support dates come from the official release pages linked above.