How often are Umbraco products released and how long are they supported

Umbraco CMS versioning and release cadence 

We want it to be safe and easy to use Umbraco CMS in Cloud and elsewhere. We are currently releasing small and frequent updates and additions on a fixed cadence every 6 weeks (minor releases) and make sure to fix bugs and release the bug fixes as soon as possible (patch releases).

Versioning

We follow semantic versioning (semver.org) with Umbraco CMS and add-ons. This is to ensure predictability with each release enabling you to anticipate what a release contains by the number that is incremented.

Semantic versioning is a tried and tested industry standard for software versioning.

Release Cadence

Starting with the release of Umbraco 9 (September 28th, 2021), we will be releasing a new major two times per year. This means that we aim to only introduce breaking changes two times per year. We believe this is an appropriate cadence, as we want everyone to continually upgrade (and we are aware that work can be required) but also need this ability in order to advance the software in the best possible way, without creating technical debt.

We release minor versions of the CMS every 6 weeks. The aim of these releases is to bring new features, functionality, and improvements. They will not contain breaking changes. Two weeks prior to releasing minor versions a release candidate is made available for testing.

Patch versions are released as needed and mainly address regression issues (bugs in the latest minor) and in some cases security issues.

Example of release schedule:

LTS: Long-term Support version
STS: Standard-term Support version

We reserve the right to move dates around in order to avoid colliding with holidays etc. This will only happen rarely, and we’ll notify you on changes on the @umbracoproject Twitter account and we are going to continually keep the release progress page on Our Umbraco up to date with expectations.

Deprecation

When we need to remove something from i.e. the public API, we will release a minor version with the deprecation in it, and keep it around for the next major as well (so announced deprecation in 10.2.0 means it will no longer be available in 12.0.0).

How hard will it be to upgrade to a new major?

Projects always need to be considered case by case when talking about upgrading to new versions. We do not expect or plan many breaking changes between majors but there will be cases when bigger changes are needed. How easy the upgrade will be depends on the breaking changes included in the major and whether your project(s) are impacted by the changes.

When evaluating upgrades it is a good idea to consider,

• Whether there will be continuous development on the project

• What 3rd party packages are used (and if they support the new major)

• Are there changes to functionality that is being used by the project

We will communicate clearly about the breaking changes and there will be extended release candidate periods to help ensure upgrades can be tested and to help package developers support new major versions.

Release cadence for add-ons (Umbraco Forms, Deploy, Commerce & Workflow)

As of Umbraco 9, we have aligned the major version numbers of our add-ons with the CMS, so the corresponding major versions are Umbraco Forms 9 and Umbraco Deploy 9. Every time we release a new major for Umbraco CMS we will also make a new major available for our add-on products.

There is currently no set release schedule for minors and patches for the official add-ons; they are released when ready/needed.

Release cadence for Umbraco Cloud

When there is a new major or minor release of Umbraco CMS, Umbraco Forms, and Umbraco Deploy, these will be available day-and-date for new projects and there will be upgrade options available for existing projects in Umbraco Cloud. Patch releases are automatically applied to all Umbraco Cloud projects that are on the corresponding minor and will be rolled out on the day of release. 

Long-term support and end-of-life strategy 

If you want to know how long we support various versions of Umbraco in and outside Umbraco Cloud, then go learn about our LTS & EOL strategy