Django News - The Post-Heroku Django World - Feb 13th 2026

An annual report from Foxley Talent on what's actually happening in the market.

How to control NULL value placement when sorting Django QuerySets using F() expressions.

Sometimes, I need to debug specific high-level tests by inspecting what gets created in the database as a side effect. I could use a debugger and poke around the Django ORM at a breakpoint - but quite often it’s simply faster to dump the entire table to JSON, see what’s there, and then apply fixes accordingly.

Yapping automates adding dependencies to pyproject.toml and running pip-tools compile/install, providing a simple, non-lockfile Python dependency workflow for Django projects.

icu4py provides Pythonic bindings to ICU4C for locale-aware text boundary analysis and MessageFormat pluralization, enabling precise internationalization in Django apps.

Heroku is winding down; migrate Django apps now to alternatives like Fly.io, Render, or self-hosted Coolify and Hetzner to regain control, reliability, and lower costs.

Analyzing the official announcement and reviewing hosting alternatives in 2026.