Linux Release Cycles and Support Lifetimes

Last reviewed on 2026-10-04 Reference

In short

Ubuntu LTS: a new LTS every two years (April, even years), five years of standard support, up to ten with Ubuntu Pro. Interim releases get nine months.
Debian: a new stable release roughly every two years, about three years of regular security support plus LTS to about five years.
Fedora (Workstation, Server and every other edition): a release every six months, each supported for about 13 months.
RHEL and rebuilds (AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux): a major release every three years or so, ten years of maintenance.
Arch and openSUSE Tumbleweed are rolling: there are no versions to expire, you just keep updating.

How long a distribution release stays supported decides how often you have to upgrade, and it is the single most important difference between, say, Fedora Server and Debian on a server. This page collects the release cadence and support window of the major distributions in one place. Dates were checked against the projects' own announcements and endoflife.date on 2026-10-04; always confirm with the upstream page linked in each section before planning around a date.

At a glance

Distribution	Release cadence	Support per release	Current releases (Oct 2026)
Ubuntu LTS	Every 2 years (April)	5 years standard; 10 with Ubuntu Pro	26.04 (to 2031), 24.04 (to 2029), 22.04 (to April 2027)
Ubuntu interim	Every 6 months (April, October)	9 months	26.10 due October 2026
Debian	About every 2 years	~3 years security + LTS to ~5 years	13 "trixie" (Aug 2025); 12 "bookworm" in LTS to June 2028
Fedora	Every 6 months (April, October)	~13 months	44 (Apr 2026, to June 2027), 43 (to Dec 2026); 45 scheduled 20 Oct 2026
RHEL / AlmaLinux / Rocky	Major ~every 3 years; minor every 6 months	10 years (+ paid extended support for RHEL)	10 (to 2035), 9 (to 2032), 8 (to 2029)
CentOS Stream	New stream with each RHEL major	~5 years	10 (to 2030), 9 (to May 2027)
openSUSE Leap	Annual minor releases	24 months per minor release	16.0 (Oct 2025, to Oct 2027)
Linux Mint	Follows Ubuntu LTS	Same as the Ubuntu LTS base	22.3 "Zena" (to April 2029); Mint 23 planned for December 2026
Arch, openSUSE Tumbleweed	Rolling	Continuous	n/a

Ubuntu

Ubuntu releases every April and October and numbers releases YY.MM. Every April of an even year the release is an LTS: five years of standard security maintenance for the main repository, and with an Ubuntu Pro subscription (free for personal use on up to five machines) a further five years of Expanded Security Maintenance that also covers universe. The releases in between, called interim releases, get only nine months, which means you must upgrade to the next release every six months or move back to an LTS.

Upgrades from one LTS to the next are switched on after the first point release (for 26.04 that was 26.04.1). See how to upgrade Ubuntu for the steps. Official schedule: ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle.

Debian

Debian releases "when it's ready", which in practice means about every two years, usually in the summer. Each stable release gets around three years of support from the Debian security team, followed by about two more years from the volunteer Debian LTS team (with a reduced set of architectures and packages). After that, paid Extended LTS is available from a third party. Debian 13 "trixie" came out on 9 August 2025; Debian 12 "bookworm" moved from regular security support to LTS in July 2026 and is covered until 30 June 2028. More on the model in the Debian overview; official dates are on debian.org/releases and wiki.debian.org/LTS.

Fedora (including Fedora Server)

Fedora targets two releases a year, in late April and late October. Each release is maintained until four weeks after the release that comes two versions later, which works out at roughly 13 months. There is no long-term Fedora: Fedora Server follows exactly the same cycle as Fedora Workstation, so a Fedora Server machine needs a version upgrade about once a year (skipping one release is supported, so dnf system-upgrade from 43 to 45 is fine).

As of October 2026: Fedora 44 was released on 28 April 2026 and is supported until 2 June 2027; Fedora 43 reaches end of life on 9 December 2026; Fedora 45 is scheduled for 20 October 2026. If that pace is too fast for a server, the downstream options are CentOS Stream, RHEL, or a RHEL rebuild such as AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux. Schedules are published at fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule and on the Fedora lifecycle page. Background: the Fedora overview.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux

RHEL gets a new major version about every three years and supports each one for ten years: five years of "full support" with new hardware enablement and minor releases every six months, then five years of maintenance with security and critical fixes. Red Hat sells extended life-cycle support beyond that. RHEL 10 arrived in May 2025 (supported to 2035), RHEL 9 runs to 2032 and RHEL 8 to 2029. AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux rebuild RHEL and follow the same major-version end dates. Official: Red Hat life cycle.

CentOS Stream is different: it is the continuously updated development branch just ahead of the next RHEL minor release. Each stream lives about five years: Stream 9 ends in May 2027 and Stream 10 in 2030.

openSUSE

openSUSE Leap is the fixed-release edition, built from SUSE Linux Enterprise. Leap 16.0 was released on 1 October 2025; Leap 16 gets a new minor release every year and each one is supported for 24 months, with minor releases planned until 2031. Leap 15.6, the last 15.x release, reached end of life on 30 April 2026. Tumbleweed is the rolling edition. See the openSUSE reference page.

Linux Mint

Mint's main edition is built on the current Ubuntu LTS and inherits its end date: every Mint 22.x release, including 22.3 "Zena" from January 2026, is supported until April 2029. The Mint team has said Mint 23, based on Ubuntu 26.04, is planned for around Christmas 2026. LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) follows Debian instead. See the Linux Mint reference page.

Rolling releases: Arch and Tumbleweed

Rolling distributions don't have releases that reach end of life. As long as you update regularly you are on the supported version. The trade-off is that you take changes continuously, including major version jumps of the desktop or toolchain, and the occasional update that needs manual intervention (announced on the Arch news page). An Arch system left without updates for many months can be harder to bring up to date than a fixed release. See the Arch Linux overview.

The kernel itself

Upstream, a new mainline kernel appears roughly every nine to ten weeks. Normally the last mainline release of each year becomes a longterm (LTS) kernel. As of October 2026 the longterm branches listed on kernel.org are 6.18, 6.12, 6.6, 6.1, 5.15 and 5.10; 5.15 and 5.10 are scheduled to end in December 2026. Distribution kernels have their own lifecycles on top of this: an Ubuntu LTS or RHEL kernel is maintained by the distribution for the life of the release, whatever happens upstream. More in the kernel overview.

How to check what you're running

# Distribution name, version and codename
cat /etc/os-release

# Ubuntu: support status of installed packages
pro status          # or: ubuntu-security-status

# Kernel version
uname -r

Choosing by support window

Set up once, touch rarely (home server, appliance): Debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, or a RHEL rebuild.
Desktop with recent software, yearly upgrade is fine: Fedora, or Ubuntu LTS with newer hardware-enablement kernels.
Always the latest, update weekly: Arch or openSUSE Tumbleweed.

The distribution comparison covers the other differences between these families.