Antlers

Antlers is the templating language that ships with Statamic. It uses double-curly-brace syntax — {{ variable }} for outputting values, {{ collection:entries }}...{{ /collection:entries }} for loops — and is designed to work naturally with Statamic’s content structures and tags. If you’ve used Liquid (Shopify’s templating language) or older PHP template systems, the syntax will feel familiar.

The language handles the most common templating tasks without requiring PHP knowledge: looping through collection entries, building navigation, outputting field values, checking conditions, and calling Statamic’s built-in tags for things like fetching related content or formatting dates. For sites where the template layer is doing straightforward content display, Antlers is usually enough.

Coming from WordPress, the equivalent would be the Loop — that pattern of while (have_posts()) { the_post(); ... } combined with template tags like the_title() and the_content(). Antlers replaces all of that with cleaner syntax and tighter integration with Statamic’s field types.

Antlers also supports cascading variable scope, which means variables set in a parent layout are available in child partials. This cuts down on the amount of explicit data-passing you need to do across template files, and it’s one of the things Statamic developers tend to appreciate after working with more rigid template systems.

Statamic also supports Blade as an alternative templating engine for developers who prefer it. Blade gives you more expressive PHP within templates and the full Laravel ecosystem, while Antlers stays closer to a content-first approach. You can mix and match in the same project if you have a reason to. See also: Blade (Templating).

One thing worth knowing for migrations: WordPress theme templates (.php files) don’t translate directly to Antlers. During a migration, the template layer gets rebuilt from scratch in Antlers or Blade, using the component and layout structure that makes sense for the new site. The content migration is often the cleanest part; it’s the template work that takes time.