Long-term support for Linux releases gets a new lease on life
Long-term support for Linux releases gets a new lease on life
https://thenewstack.io/long-term-support-for-linux-releases-gets-a-new-lease-on-life/
Publish Date: 2026-03-06 12:33:00
Source Domain: thenewstack.io
If you want to keep your Linux instances safe and secure, your best course is to use Long Term Support (LTS) Linux kernels. They’re the ones that get all the bug fixes.
Now, once upon a time, the LTS kernels were supported for six years. Then, in 2023, the Linux kernel maintainers decided to cut LTS support to two years. Why? Because maintainers were burning out. That’s still a problem, but based on user feedback, Linux stable maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has decided to extend the existing LTS kernels’ supported life.
On the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), Kroah-Hartman writes that, “based on lots of discussions with different companies and groups and the other stable kernel maintainer [Sasha Levin],” they decided to extend support for several key releases into 2027 and 2028, and partially rolling back an earlier move to sharply limit LTS.
A longer lease on life for more recent kernels
Specifically, the new dates mean concrete, if modest, extensions for the main active LTS lines. According to the revised schedule, Linux 6.6 will now receive fixes through the end of 2027, while 6.12 and 6.18 are slated to be maintained until the end of 2028. That translates into roughly a four‑year window for 6.6 and 6.12, and at least three years for 6.18, significantly more than the two years that had become the new default for LTS trees in recent planning.
The Linux kernel long-term release schedule (credit: kernel.org).
No changes for 5.xx branches
However, the older 5.10 and 5.15 branches keep their existing December 2026 end‑of‑life dates, putting them on a clear path to retirement later this year. Kernel.org’s projections still list 6.1 as supported through December 2027, but the focus of this revision is on the newer 6.6, 6.12, and 6.18 trees that many distributions and vendors are either adopting now or lining up for their next cycles.
The new schedule does not restore the old six‑year promise, but it does push back against the strict…
