Electron 42 End of Life: October 20, 2026 (Three-Version Policy)

By Scott Bissett  ·  Published: October 6, 2026  ·  Reference guide  ·  Dates read at Electron's release schedule, its release timelines page and releases.electronjs.org on October 6, 2026.

Electron 42 reaches end of life (EOL) on October 20, 2026. That is the End of Life date Electron prints for 42.0.0 on its own release schedule, and it is the same day the schedule lists for the stable release of Electron 45. The two dates are one date by design: Electron's policy is that the latest three stable major versions are supported, so the day 45 goes stable, the supported set becomes 43, 44 and 45 and the 42 line leaves it. Electron 42 shipped on May 5, 2026 with Chromium M148 and Node.js 24. At publication it is the oldest of the three supported lines, which under Electron's policy means it receives only security fixes directly; 43 and 44 receive the broader set of fixes.

What ends on that day

Electron does not run a separate extended-support phase. A major version is either one of the three supported stable lines or it is unsupported. On October 20, 2026 Electron 42 moves from the first group to the second, and the Electron team no longer ships patches for it: no security backports, no bug fixes and no new 42.x minor or patch releases. Electron's versioning doc puts it plainly: older lines are not supported by the Electron project.

Two details from Electron's policy matter for the time before that day. First, as the oldest supported line, 42 already receives only security fixes directly; the newest stable line receives all fixes from main and the one before it receives most of them. Second, Electron supports only the latest minor release in each stable series, so an app pinned to an older 42.x minor is outside the support window even before the end of life date. Keep 42 apps on the newest 42.x until the upgrade lands; the live patch version is on the Electron 42 page.

Anything that depends on the bundled Chromium M148 and Node.js 24 inherits the same cut-off. After the end of life date, a Chromium security fix shipped in a newer Electron major is not backported to 42, which is the practical reason the three-version window matters for a desktop app that renders web content.

The dates, in one table

Release and end of support dates below are the days Electron's schedule prints as Stable and End of Life. Electron 45 is not yet served in our data as a shipped cycle; its stable date is shown as the day Electron 42 ends, which is what Electron's schedule prints, and the schedule's own End of Life date for 45 will be served once 45 ships.

Chromium and Node.js columns are the major versions Electron's schedule lists for each line. Electron ships a specific Chromium and Node.js build inside each release; the exact patch versions change with each Electron patch release and are not repeated here.

The three-version policy, in Electron's words

Electron's release timelines page states the rule in one sentence: "The latest three stable major versions are supported by the Electron team." The same page sets out how fixes flow between those three lines. The newest stable release gets every fix from main. The one before it gets most of those fixes, as time and bandwidth allow. The oldest of the three gets security fixes only. It also says Electron supports only the latest minor release within each stable series.

The cadence that drives the dates is on the same page. Electron ships a major version alongside every other Chromium release, on an eight-week cycle, and each major spends four weeks in alpha and four in beta before stable. Because a new major arrives every eight weeks and three are supported, each major is supported for roughly 24 weeks after its stable day. Electron 42's dates follow that arithmetic: stable on May 5, 2026, end of life on October 20, 2026, 24 weeks later, when the third major after it goes stable.

Electron's versioning doc describes the mechanism: each supported version has its own stabilization branch, several of which exist at once, and older lines are not supported by the project. There is no paid or extended support tier from the Electron team itself; the three-version window is the whole policy.

What to do before the date

1. Find every Electron 42 app. The Electron version is the electron entry in each app's package.json, or process.versions.electron at runtime. An app pinned to 42.x needs a plan before October 20, 2026.
2. Pick the target. Electron 44 is the newest stable line at publication and is supported until March 2, 2027. Electron 43 is supported until January 5, 2027, which buys less time. Electron 45 becomes the newest line on its stable day and then carries the longest runway of the three.
3. Read the breaking changes for each major you cross. Electron's breaking changes page lists removed and changed APIs per major version. A move from 42 to 44 crosses the 43 and 44 entries; a move to 45 adds a third.
4. Stay on the latest 42.x in the meantime. Electron supports only the latest minor of each stable series, so an app on an older 42.x patch is outside the window today, not just after the end of life date.
5. Check the rest of the stack in the same pass. The Node.js line bundled in Electron is separate from any Node.js you run on a server, and the two have different end dates; see our Node.js lifecycle page. Our EOL Checker and API answer the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related

• Electron 42 — the live status page with its EOL Risk Score and latest patch
• Electron — every version's dates
• 2026 EOL calendar — every end date this year, including Electron 42
• Node.js — the runtime line Electron bundles has its own server-side dates
• How we verify our dates — the rules every number on this site is held to