CentOS End of Life —
All Versions EOL, Migration Options
CentOS was the go-to free alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for enterprise servers for nearly two decades. It is now, definitively, dead — and the servers that ran it are either already a security liability or on borrowed time. CentOS Linux 8 reached end of life on December 31, 2021. CentOS Linux 7 reached end of life on June 30, 2024. There are no supported CentOS Linux versions remaining.
This guide covers what happened to CentOS, what the EOL dates mean practically, where CentOS Stream fits in, and what your migration options are.
CentOS End-of-Life Dates — Full History
| Version | Release | End of Life | Status | EOL Risk Score™ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CentOS Linux 6 | Jul 2011 | Nov 30, 2020 | EOL | 97 |
| CentOS Linux 7 | Jul 2014 | Jun 30, 2024 | EOL | 85 |
| CentOS Linux 8 | Sep 2019 | Dec 31, 2021 | EOL | 89 |
| CentOS Stream 8 | Oct 2019 | May 31, 2024 | EOL | 82 |
| CentOS Stream 9 | Dec 2021 | May 31, 2027 | Supported | 22 |
| CentOS Stream 10 | Dec 2024 | TBD | Supported | 10 |
CentOS 7 — End of Life June 30, 2024
CentOS 7 reached end of life on June 30, 2024 — the same date as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. For nearly a decade, CentOS 7 was the most common Linux distribution in enterprise data centers. It is based on RHEL 7, uses the yum package manager, ships with Python 2.7 by default, and runs on kernels in the 3.10.x range.
Every one of those characteristics is now a compounding EOL risk. CentOS 7's kernel (3.10) has been EOL for years. Python 2.7 has been EOL since January 2020. The system OpenSSL (1.0.2) has been EOL since December 2019. Servers running CentOS 7 are EOL at the OS level, kernel level, runtime level, and cryptography library level simultaneously.
CentOS 8 — End of Life December 31, 2021
CentOS 8's end-of-life story is different — and worse. Red Hat announced in December 2020 that CentOS Linux 8 would reach end of life on December 31, 2021, cutting short what was originally a 10-year lifecycle. The announcement came less than 18 months after CentOS 8's initial release.
Teams that had migrated to CentOS 8 to modernize their infrastructure found themselves holding an EOL operating system less than two years after deploying it. Many of those servers are still running today — over four years past EOL.
CentOS Stream — What It Is and What It Isn't
CentOS Stream is not a replacement for CentOS Linux. It is a rolling pre-release distribution that sits upstream of RHEL. Where CentOS Linux was a downstream rebuild of RHEL (stable, tested, binary-compatible), CentOS Stream receives updates before those updates are released in RHEL — which means it may contain bugs that are later fixed before the RHEL release.
CentOS Stream 9 is supported until May 31, 2027, and CentOS Stream 10 was released in December 2024. If you are building new infrastructure, CentOS Stream is a legitimate option — but understand what it is: a development preview, not a production-stable RHEL clone.
Running EOL CentOS in Production: The Real Risk
The CentOS 7 and 8 EOL dates mean one thing practically: no more patches from Red Hat or the CentOS project. CVEs affecting the kernel, glibc, OpenSSL, systemd, or any other core system component disclosed after the EOL date will never be addressed in an official package update.
Migration Options: AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, RHEL
AlmaLinux OS
AlmaLinux is a free, community-supported RHEL binary-compatible rebuild maintained by the AlmaLinux OS Foundation. AlmaLinux 8 is supported through May 2029; AlmaLinux 9 through May 2032. It is the most widely adopted CentOS replacement and provides in-place migration tooling via almalinux-deploy.
Rocky Linux
Rocky Linux is another free RHEL-compatible rebuild, founded by one of CentOS's original creators. Rocky Linux 8 is supported through May 2029; Rocky Linux 9 through May 2032. Rocky provides migrate2rocky for in-place conversion from CentOS 8.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
RHEL itself is available at no cost for up to 16 production servers through the Red Hat Developer Program. For larger environments, RHEL provides the longest and most commercially-backed support lifecycle — RHEL 9 is supported through May 2032, with Extended Lifecycle Support available through 2036.