Laravel 5 provides a new folder structure and features like environments, dependency injection, form requests, file systems, middleware, annotations, events, Elixir, and scheduling. It introduces the .env file for environment variables, makes dependency injection easier, validates input with form requests, supports multiple file systems, and allows controlling application flow through middleware. Annotations scan routes and events, Elixir integrates tools like Gulp, and the scheduler allows queueing commands and calls.