In our product roadmap, there are always exciting things ahead. But that also means we can’t support all Umbraco versions forever.
If you are working with Umbraco 8, you are free to continue using this major version until you choose to migrate to Umbraco 9. However, we’d like to give you a friendly heads-up that Umbraco HQ will support Umbraco 8 only until a specific date.
Umbraco 8:
- Umbraco 8.18, the final minor version of Umbraco 8, was released on February 24th, 2022. The minor will be supported for 24 months, until February 2024.
- After that, it will enter the security-only phase for an additional year where we will only fix security issues and release security updates.
- At the end of the security-only phase, Umbraco 8 will reach the end-of-life (EOL) date. EOL for Umbraco 8 is February 24th, 2025.
We no longer recommend using Umbraco 8 after it has been considered EOL.
You can read more about our general long-term support and end-of-life policies here.
If you are working with Umbraco Cloud:
- 24 months after the final Umbraco 8 minor version, Umbraco 8.18, was released, you won't be able to create new Umbraco Cloud projects based on Umbraco 8. This will happen in February 2024.
But what is “end of life” or EOL?
When we talk about the end of life for software, it means that a certain major version is no longer supported by our development team.
After the EOL date for an Umbraco major version, there won’t be any minor releases or patch releases. This means that we will no longer work on and maintain features, and we will no longer release fixes for bugs, regressions, or security issues.
The EOL phase is the last stage in the life cycle of an Umbraco product version.
It follows a security-only phase where we only provide fixes for security issues (but we no longer work on features and fix bugs or regressions as in the preceding support phase).
I use Cloud hosting - what is the EOL on Umbraco Cloud?
When you use Umbraco Cloud, all new projects are, by default, based on the current major version of Umbraco. But if you want to create a new project on a previous major version, it still has to be in the support phase.
Once a major version of Umbraco has entered the security-only phase, you can’t create new projects (this also includes baseline children) on Umbraco Cloud which is based on this version.
For Umbraco 8, this means that:
- 24 months after the final Umbraco 8 minor version, Umbraco 8.18, was released - when Umbraco 8 enters the security-only phase - you can't create new sites nor baseline children that are based on Umbraco 8. This is February 2024.
- We will support your existing Cloud projects on Umbraco 8 until its EOL date in February 2025, three years after the final Umbraco 8 minor was released.
Can I use Umbraco 8 after the EOL date?
Technically, yes - but we no longer recommend using Umbraco 8 after it reaches the EOL phase. If you decide to continue using a major that has reached end of life, you may run into some issues:
- Risk of security issues
With a major out of the security phase, we no longer provide fixes for security issues that may pop up. While the software will still work, we can’t guarantee it will remain as secure as possible after the EOL date.
- Outdated features or lack of new features
The reason why we encourage Umbraco users to upgrade to the latest major version is to make sure you always get all the new features that come with it. Staying on a version that is in the security phase or past the EOL date means you don’t work with the fastest and best version of Umbraco available - and that’s a pity!
In short, using a major version of Umbraco after its EOL date might mean that the CMS won’t be as reliable, secure, and friendly to work with as you are used to.
