IBM i End of Life: 7.4 Has 49 Days of Standard Support Left — and Whether You Call It AS/400, iSeries, or IBM i, the Clock Is the Same
IBM i estates are where enterprise software goes to outlive its installers. The platform runs the back offices of banks, credit unions, insurers, distributors, and manufacturers on a simple promise — it just runs — and it keeps that promise so well that the version question stops being asked. The people who ask it usually use a name IBM retired years ago: the box is "the AS/400," or "the iSeries," and it has been quietly doing nightly batch since someone now retired signed the PO. This article is the lifecycle table behind all three names, because one of its dates is now close: IBM i 7.4 reaches the end of standard support on September 30, 2026 — 49 days from publication.
That date should look familiar to readers of this site. September 30, 2026 is already the most documented cliff on the 2026 calendar: it is the day Oracle Premier Support for JDK 17 ends and the day FortiOS 7.2 reaches End of Support. IBM i 7.4 makes it a triple — and adds a fourth, quieter casualty from its own family: per the notes on IBM's release life cycle page, IBM i 7.3's first paid Service Extension window also closes September 30, 2026, pushing 7.3 estates onto a second, "extended Service Extension" tier that runs to September 30, 2028. The rhythm is IBM policy, the same one we documented for MQ: end-of-support dates coordinate onto April 30 or September 30, announced at least 12 months out. Every IBM i date since V5R1 in 2001 has landed on one of those two days.
How the IBM i lifecycle actually works: one clock per release, Technology Refreshes inside it
IBM i's lifecycle is simpler than its Power-estate siblings' — one clock, running per release — but the clock is unusually long and the fine print sits in footnotes. The policy, per IBM's IBM i Release Support page: "Every release of IBM i software has a finite support period," and the end of support date "is announced either with the initial release announcement or twelve months prior to becoming effective." The release life cycle page's own Note 1 says the change in service level for 7.5 and 7.6 "will be announced with at least 12 months' notice prior to the effective termination date." The observed record: 7.1 got eight years of standard support, 7.2 seven, 7.3 seven and a half, 7.4 seven and a quarter — roughly double an MQ LTS release's five-year floor, on a release cadence of about every three years (7.1 in 2010, 7.2 in 2014, 7.3 in 2016, 7.4 in 2019, 7.5 in 2022, 7.6 in 2025).
Between releases, new function arrives by Technology Refresh — per IBM's Technology Refresh page, "a collection of operating system software that is developed together, packaged together, and tested together," delivered since IBM i 7.1 through Technology Refresh PTF groups, and since 2025 split into separate Hardware and Software Technology Refreshes. Here is the structural difference from AIX, and it is good news for once: on AIX, each Technology Level carries its own three-year End of Fix Support clock, so "we run 7.3" is not a support status. On IBM i, the lifecycle dates IBM publishes are per release — there is no per-TR expiry table — and TRs ride inside the release's single window. An IBM i 7.5 system on an older TR is behind on function and hardware enablement, and IBM's stated best practice is to stay current on PTF groups, Cumulative PTF packages, and HIPER fixes; but it is not silently unsupported the way an AIX box on a dead TL is. The trap on this platform is different: it is the release date nobody looks up, on the machine nobody restarts.
IBM i release dates and end-of-support dates: every version since 1988
Every IBM i release line we track, newest first, with live status — this table's lineage runs back to the machine's 1988 launch (IBM's own life cycle table starts at "Rel 1," GA August 26, 1988). Dates are from our tracked lifecycle data, verified against IBM's release life cycle page on August 12, 2026 — release date, end of standard support (IBM's "change in service level"), and the end of the paid Service Extension where IBM offers one. Each release links to its lifecycle page with live status and risk score.
| Release | Status | Released | End of Support (EOL) | Extended support ends | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM i 7.6 | Supported | Apr 18, 2025 | Not announced | Available | Current release. Requires Power10 or Power11 — Power9 cannot run it. |
| IBM i 7.5 | Supported | May 10, 2022 | Not announced | Available | No announced date; per IBM's policy the date arrives with at least 12 months' notice. Requires Power9 or later. |
| IBM i 7.4 | Warning | Jun 21, 2019 | Sep 30, 2026 | Sep 30, 2029† | 49 days of standard support left at publication. The newest release Power8 can run. |
| IBM i 7.3 | EOL | Apr 15, 2016 | Sep 30, 2023 | Sep 30, 2028 | Two-rung extension ladder: first window ends Sep 30, 2026, extended tier to 2028. Power7's ceiling. |
| IBM i 7.2 | EOL | May 2, 2014 | Apr 30, 2021 | Apr 30, 2026 | Fully dead — the extended Service Extension closed April 30, 2026. |
| IBM i 7.1 | EOL | Apr 23, 2010 | Apr 30, 2018 | Apr 30, 2024† | First Technology Refresh-era release; IBM lists its extension as available through April 2024. |
| IBM i 6.1 | EOL | Mar 21, 2008 | Sep 30, 2015 | Sep 30, 2019 | Covers machine-code levels V6R1M0 and V6R1M1 per IBM's lifecycle notes. |
| V5R4 (5.4) | EOL | Feb 14, 2006 | Sep 30, 2013 | Sep 30, 2017 | Eleven and a half years from GA to the end of its extension — the ladder is not new. |
| V5R3 (5.3) | EOL | Jun 11, 2004 | Apr 30, 2009 | Apr 30, 2013 | |
| V5R2 (5.2) | EOL | Aug 30, 2002 | Apr 30, 2007 | — | |
| V5R1 (5.1) | EOL | May 25, 2001 | Sep 30, 2005 | — | First release whose dates land on the April 30 / September 30 rhythm. |
| V4R5 (4.5) | EOL | Jul 28, 2000 | Jul 31, 2002 | Dec 31, 2002 | |
| V4R4 (4.4) | EOL | May 21, 1999 | May 31, 2001 | Nov 30, 2001 | |
| V4R3 (4.3) | EOL | Sep 11, 1998 | Jan 31, 2001 | — | |
| V4R2 (4.2) | EOL | Feb 27, 1998 | May 31, 2000 | Jan 31, 2001 | |
| V4R1 (4.1) | EOL | Aug 29, 1997 | May 31, 2000 | — | |
| V3R7 (3.7) | EOL | Nov 8, 1996 | Jun 30, 1999 | — | |
| V3R2 (3.2) | EOL | Jun 21, 1996 | May 31, 2000 | — | Shipped out of sequence — GA after V3R6, and outlived it by 19 months. |
| V3R6 (3.6) | EOL | Dec 22, 1995 | Oct 31, 1998 | — | |
| V3R1 (3.1) | EOL | Nov 25, 1994 | Oct 31, 1998 | — | |
| V3R0.5 (3.0) | EOL | Jun 3, 1994 | May 31, 1997 | — | |
| V2R3 (2.3) | EOL | Dec 17, 1993 | May 31, 1996 | — | |
| V2R2 (2.2) | EOL | Sep 18, 1992 | Mar 31, 1995 | — | |
| V2R1 (2.1) | EOL | Mar 6, 1992 | Jun 30, 1994 | — | Oldest cycle in our tracked data; IBM's own table reaches back to Rel 1, GA August 26, 1988. |
Dates from our tracked dataset (verification pass 2026-08-12), which mirrors the community-maintained endoflife.date IBM i table; every release date and end-of-support date above matches IBM's release life cycle page (document 668157). "End of Support" is the date IBM's table calls "Change in Service Level" — the switch from standard support to paid extension. †Two extended-support dates come from that IBM page's own notes rather than our tracked data: 7.4's Service Extension (announced to start October 1, 2026 and run through September 30, 2029, per IBM's Note 5) and 7.1's Program Support Extension through April 30, 2024. "Not announced" reflects that IBM has published no end date for 7.5 or 7.6; "Available" means IBM's policy provides an extension path whose dates are likewise unannounced.
September 30: the triple cliff, and the ladder behind it
What makes IBM i's September 30 different from FortiOS's or Oracle's is what sits on the far side. IBM's extension ladder for this platform is the longest and most formalized we track: per the release life cycle page's notes, 7.2 got a Service Extension from May 2021 to April 2024 and then an extended Service Extension to April 30, 2026; 7.3 got October 2023 to September 2026, extending to September 30, 2028; and 7.4's Service Extension is already announced — October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2029, published a year before the release even leaves standard support. Counting from 7.4's June 2019 GA to the end of its announced extension, that is a ten-year runway on a single release. On this platform, the cliff has a staircase bolted to it.
The staircase is not free, and that is the part the notes do not price. The Service Extension is a separately purchased support offering, sold per IBM's own coverage documents (IBM publishes the product-coverage details as a PDF, not the price), and it belongs to the same quote-based economy we documented in what extended support actually costs: no public list price, negotiated through IBM or a Business Partner, and structurally a bridge rather than a destination. The pattern to respect is 7.2's: its ladder ended April 30, 2026, and there is no third rung. A 7.2 system today is not "on extended support" — it is out of options that involve fixes. The ladder buys time; it has never yet bought indefinite time.
And the missing dates carry information, exactly as they did for MQ 9.4: 7.5 and 7.6 have no announced end dates, and under IBM's stated policy none can take effect without at least 12 months' public notice. We will not print a predicted date — the observed record (seven-plus years of standard support per release, dates landing on April 30 or September 30) is a pattern, not a promise. When IBM announces, our data layer picks it up and this table corrects itself at the next site build; that is how this site stays honest about dates that move.
The hardware coupling: your Power generation decides your OS ceiling
Searches that land on this page often start from the hardware — "Power7 end of life," "p Series end of life" — and on this platform the hardware question and the OS question are the same question. IBM publishes the coupling as a matrix: the System to IBM i mapping (updated July 14, 2026) lists every server family from the AS/400e machines of the late 1990s to this year's Power11 boxes against the OS levels each can run. Read upward, it tells you your ceiling; read downward, it tells you when your floor disappears.
The ceilings, per that matrix: Power7 and Power7+ servers top out at IBM i 7.3 — a Power7 machine's newest possible OS left standard support in September 2023, and its last paid extension ends September 30, 2028; there is no software cure, only newer iron. Power8 tops out at 7.4 — which converts this September 30 into a hardware deadline: after it, no IBM i release with standard support runs on Power8 at all, and 7.4's extension to 2029 becomes the fleet's terminal runway. IBM i 7.5 requires Power9 or later; 7.6 requires Power10 or Power11 — a Power9 estate can sit current on 7.5 today but cannot take 7.6, the only release with an entirely open-ended future. Each September, the matrix quietly tightens. (The sibling hardware line once branded pSeries and System p runs AIX, whose different — and shorter — clocks we covered in the AIX Technology Level article; both hardware families folded into IBM Power Systems in 2008.)
AS/400, iSeries, System i, IBM i: three renames, one lifecycle table
No platform's support status hides behind its names like this one's. The operating system shipped in 1988 as OS/400 on the AS/400 — IBM's lifecycle table starts at "Rel 1," GA August 26, 1988 — and was renamed i5/OS in 2004 and IBM i in 2008, while the hardware ran AS/400 → eServer iSeries → System i before merging into Power Systems. IBM's own mapping page still carries the fossil record: its server families run AS/400e, iSeries, then Power5 through Power11 in a single table. The version scheme changed mid-story too — V5R4 became "5.4" in modern notation, and the table above shows both — which is why an inventory that says "V5R4" and a spreadsheet that says "5.4" are describing the same long-dead release, out of standard support since 2013.
The names matter operationally because the people and the paperwork use different ones. A CMDB entry created in 2009 says "iSeries"; the ops runbook says "the AS/400"; IBM's support site says IBM i. Meanwhile the thing itself keeps running — the platform's integrated design (database, middleware, security, and runtime licensed and shipped as one stack, per IBM's own product description) is precisely what lets a machine survive a decade without a version conversation. When the version is finally checked, it is usually because of a date like this September's. The check takes one command, and it is this platform's oslevel -s moment: run DSPPTF on a 5250 session — the display's "Release of base option" line is the release — and WRKPTFGRP shows the Technology Refresh PTF group level beneath it.
The two-hop trap: why waiting on IBM i compounds
On most platforms, deferring an upgrade costs calendar time. On IBM i it eventually costs the upgrade path itself. Per IBM's Release Support page, direct upgrades hop at most two releases: 7.3 can go to 7.4 or 7.5; 7.4 to 7.5 (and onward per IBM's current upgrade planning); but 7.2 cannot reach 7.5 directly — a 7.2 estate does a multiple-step upgrade through an interim release, doubling the project. And the page's sharpest warning is about time: after a release's end of support, "direct upgrades to subsequent releases are only available for a limited time," and once they are withdrawn "there is no supported way to upgrade the system" — what remains is a labor-intensive manual migration that IBM says typically requires hiring custom services. Each rung of the extension ladder you ride is also a rung the upgrade path decays under you.
The stakes are structural rather than headline-driven, and we say that with a checked record: no IBM i, AS/400, or iSeries entry appears in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog — we searched the August 10, 2026 catalog release before writing this (IBM's KEV entries are Langflow, Aspera Faspex, Data Risk Manager, WebSphere Application Server, InfoSphere BigInsights, and Planning Analytics — none of them this platform). But the integrated stack cuts both ways: the database, Java environments, OpenSSH, and web services inside an IBM i system are serviced through the same per-release PTF machinery, and IBM's security bulletins ship fixes to releases in support. A 7.2 system — or a 7.3 system without a Service Extension contract — is outside that machinery entirely, underneath ledgers and policy systems. For an EU financial institution, that condition has a regulatory name under DORA's legacy-ICT provisions, and for essential entities NIS2 reads the same way; an auditor needs only IBM's published table to write the finding. These are the same estates running MQ queue managers and Db2 next door — the IBM stack ages as a unit, and IBM i is the member most likely to be running something old enough to vote.
We track IBM i and 480+ other products against vendor-verified dates — every IBM i release with live status, check any version in seconds, or see what else hits end of life this quarter.
IBM i currently carries an EOL Risk Score™ of 50/100 — Grade C, elevated risk, recalculated at every site build from EOL recency, attack surface, CISA KEV exposure, and extended-support availability. Per-version scores and dates are on the IBM i lifecycle page.
The right response comes down to one question: how many more years does this system need to run? Under a year, extended support (where it exists) is usually cheaper than an emergency migration. One to three years, migrate — support fees paid repeatedly cost more than doing the project once. Indefinitely, migrate now and plan the next one before it surprises you. Extended support is often the more expensive choice over a multi-year horizon — a bridge, not a destination.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does IBM i 7.4 support end?
IBM i 7.4 reaches the end of standard support — the date IBM's release life cycle page calls the change in service level — on September 30, 2026. It is not the end of the road: IBM has already announced a paid Service Extension for 7.4 starting October 1, 2026 and running through September 30, 2029, the longest announced extension window in the current IBM i lineup. What September 30 ends is standard entitlement — after that date, continuing to receive support on 7.4 is a separately purchased arrangement, not part of the software maintenance you already pay for. The supported moves are IBM i 7.5 or 7.6, with a hardware catch: per IBM's system-to-IBM i mapping, 7.5 requires Power9 or later and 7.6 requires Power10 or Power11, so a Power8 machine cannot upgrade past 7.4 at all.
Is IBM i 7.3 still supported?
Not under standard support. IBM i 7.3's standard support ended September 30, 2023, and it has run on IBM's paid Service Extension since. That ladder has two rungs, per the notes on IBM's release life cycle page: the first Service Extension window ends September 30, 2026 — the same day IBM i 7.4 leaves standard support — and an extended Service Extension runs from October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2028. A 7.3 system without a Service Extension contract has received no fixes since September 2023. 7.3 also matters for hardware reasons: per IBM's system-to-IBM i mapping, it is the newest release that runs on Power7 and Power7+ servers, so for a Power7 estate the way forward is new hardware, not a newer release.
Is AS/400 the same as IBM i?
Same lineage, three names apart. The operating system shipped in 1988 as OS/400 on the AS/400 — IBM's own release life cycle table for IBM i starts at Rel 1, generally available August 26, 1988 — was renamed i5/OS in 2004 and renamed again to IBM i in 2008, while the hardware went from AS/400 to eServer iSeries to System i before folding into IBM Power Systems. A machine someone calls the AS/400 today is almost always a Power server running IBM i, and its support status is decided by the IBM i release number, not by the name on the badge. The names hide the clock: a search for AS/400 or iSeries end of life resolves to the IBM i lifecycle table, where the live deadline is 7.4's September 30, 2026 date.
What IBM i versions run on Power7, Power8, and Power9 servers?
Per IBM's system-to-IBM i mapping page (updated July 14, 2026): Power7 and Power7+ servers top out at IBM i 7.3 — 7.4 and later were never supported on them — so a Power7 machine's newest possible OS left standard support in September 2023 and rides the paid Service Extension to September 30, 2028. Power8 tops out at IBM i 7.4, which makes September 30, 2026 a hardware deadline in disguise: after that date, no IBM i release with standard support runs on Power8. Power9 runs 7.2 through 7.5 but not 7.6, which requires Power10 or Power11. The coupling works in both directions — new releases gate on hardware generations, and hardware generations age out of the OS lifecycle — so an IBM i upgrade plan is usually a Power upgrade plan too.
Related
- All IBM i releases with live status · IBM i 7.4 — dates and risk score
- The Power-estate series: IBM AIX — the Technology Level Clock · IBM MQ — Every Date Lands on September 30 — the OS and middleware running beside IBM i on the same iron
- Oracle JDK 17's September 30 Deadline · FortiOS 7.2 — Same Cliff, Same Day — the other two edges of the September 30, 2026 triple cliff
- What Extended Support Actually Costs — where IBM's quote-based Service Extension fits the cross-vendor pricing picture
- IBM End-of-Life Dates: The Complete Enterprise Matrix · IBM Db2 End of Life
- DORA and Legacy ICT · NIS2 and EOL Compliance — what EU regulators expect when the vendor stops fixing
- The 2026 EOL Calendar — everything else with a September date