Java 8 End of Life by Vendor: Red Hat's Ends November 30, 2026
Java 8 reached general availability on March 18, 2014, and twelve years later the question "when does Java 8 reach end of life?" still has no single answer, because Java 8 has no single vendor. Each distribution of OpenJDK 8 is built, patched and supported by a different company on that company's own calendar. Five of them run to the end of 2030 or beyond. One runs out in November 2026: Red Hat's OpenJDK Life Cycle and Support Policy lists the end of full support for OpenJDK 8 (1.8) as November 30, 2026, on RHEL and on Windows alike. That is the date this guide is organised around, because it is the one that arrives first and the one that reaches the most servers: OpenJDK 8 is the Java in RHEL 7, 8 and 9, and the support contract is the RHEL subscription itself.
Every distribution's Java 8 date, from its own roadmap
Rows are ordered alphabetically by distribution; vendors do not pay for placement here. "Support ends" is the end of the vendor's standard updates for its Java 8 builds as we serve it, and "Extended" the end of any further paid or commercial phase the vendor publishes. The last column says what the date covers, because the terms behind each one differ: a community pledge, a subscription entitlement, or a paid support contract. Every date is rewritten from our data at each build.
| Distribution | Java 8 support ends | Extended | Most recent 8 release | What the date covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Corretto | December 31, 2030 | — | October 1, 2026 | Amazon's Corretto FAQ lists Corretto 8 with a GA date of January 31, 2019, a last planned update in October 2030 and end of life in December 2030, with security updates "at no cost until end-of-life", planned quarterly. |
| Azul Zulu | December 31, 2030 | December 31, 2032 | August 18, 2026 | Azul's support roadmap lists Java 8 Production Support ending December 2030 for Azul Core and Azul Prime, and says to add two years of Extended Support for LTS releases, intended to help users migrate. |
| BellSoft Liberica JDK | Commercial support to March 31, 2031 | August 19, 2026 | BellSoft's support roadmap lists Liberica JDK 8 with an end of commercial support of March 2031, and commits to at least eight years of fixes for LTS versions under its support plans. The roadmap prints no separate date for free builds; our Liberica JDK 8 page carries the dates as we serve them. | |
| Eclipse Temurin | December 31, 2030 | — | August 25, 2026 | Adoptium's support page lists Java 8 (LTS) with an end of availability of "At least Dec 2030", and says it will keep building LTS binaries as long as the upstream source is actively maintained. Free community builds; commercial support is sold by third parties. |
| IBM Semeru Runtimes | December 31, 2030 | — | September 24, 2026 | IBM's support page lists version 8 (LTS) with an end of service and end of availability of 31 Dec 2030, free to download and use with quarterly security updates; IBM notes all future dates are predictions tied to the OpenJDK and OpenJ9 projects. |
| Oracle JDK | March 31, 2022 | December 31, 2030 | August 18, 2026 | Oracle's roadmap lists Premier Support until March 2022 and Extended Support until December 2030, with the Extended Support uplift fee waived for Java SE 8 for the whole period. Paid: Oracle Customers only. Public updates for personal and development use continue under the OTN license. |
| Red Hat build of OpenJDK | November 30, 2026 | ELS-1 to December 2032, separately paid | October 16, 2025 | Red Hat's policy table lists OpenJDK 8 (1.8) with an end of full support of November 30, 2026 on RHEL 7.1+, 8.0+ and 9.0+ and on Windows, and an end of ELS-1 of December 31, 2032; "a separate entitlement for ELS support is required". Entitlement otherwise comes with the RHEL subscription. |
Two distributions are absent because they never shipped Java 8: Microsoft Build of OpenJDK starts at 11, and Oracle's OpenJDK builds at jdk.java.net start at 9. GraalVM Community likewise has no 8 line. For the same table across Java 11, 17, 21 and 25, see Java end-of-life dates by vendor.
Red Hat's date, and what Red Hat says comes after it
Red Hat ships OpenJDK as RPM packages inside Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and its policy page says entitlements for Java workloads on OpenJDK are included in a RHEL subscription. That is why its date reaches further than its share of the Java market: a RHEL 8 or 9 server with java-1.8.0-openjdk installed is on Red Hat's clock whether or not anyone chose a Java vendor. The policy table gives OpenJDK 8 four dates and one condition. End of full support: November 30, 2026, on RHEL 7.1 and later, 8.0 and later, 9.0 and later, and on Windows Server and Windows 10 and 11. End of ELS-1: December 2032. The condition, from the entitlements section: "a separate entitlement for ELS support is required to receive support during the ELS phase of the lifecycle." Red Hat also notes that OpenJDK 8 was retired on RHEL 6 with 1.8.0_275 as its last update there, and that on RHEL 9 OpenJDK 8 is usable only with applications compiled for Java 8 or lower, since RHEL 9's own Java components target OpenJDK 11 bytecode.
Red Hat's most recent OpenJDK 8 release as we serve it is dated October 16, 2025; Red Hat says it delivers four OpenJDK updates a year, about three months apart, for the 8, 11, 17, 21 and 25 distributions. The same table gives the newer lines a Red Hat 8 estate can move to without changing support contract: OpenJDK 17 to December 31, 2027, OpenJDK 21 to December 31, 2029, OpenJDK 25 to December 31, 2030. OpenJDK 11's full support ended on October 31, 2024, two years before 8's, which is why Red Hat's page carries a note titled "Why is OpenJDK 8 supported for longer than OpenJDK 11?"
Oracle's three dates for Java 8
Oracle's Java SE Support Roadmap is where most "Java 8 is dead" headlines come from, and it carries three separate dates that get conflated. Premier Support for Java SE 8 ended in March 2022, which we serve as March 31, 2022. Extended Support runs until December 2030, served as December 31, 2030, and the roadmap's footnote says the Extended Support uplift fee is waived for Java SE 8 from March 2022 through December 2030, so an Oracle Java SE subscriber keeps receiving Oracle JDK 8 updates with no extra line item; the most recent as we serve it is dated August 18, 2026. Then Sustaining Support, indefinite, with no new fixes.
The date that changed most people's lives was none of these. In April 2019 Java SE 8 went through what Oracle calls the end of permissive licensing: from the April 2019 Critical Patch Update, Oracle Customers get Java 8 updates for commercial use through My Oracle Support, while Oracle continues free public updates of Java SE 8 "indefinitely for Personal, Development and other Users" via java.com, with at least 18 months' notice promised before any end date is set. Running Oracle's JDK 8 in production without a subscription has therefore been a licensing problem, not a patching one, since 2019; our Oracle Java licensing guide covers that side. Oracle's roadmap also ties the Java Plugin and Java Web Start to Java 8 as "the sunset release for the Deployment Stack", with Web Start supported until the end of Java SE 8 Extended Support.
The 2030 group: Temurin, Corretto, Zulu, Semeru
Four distributions list the same month, and their reasons are worth separating because they are not the same promise. Eclipse Temurin's roadmap says "At least Dec 2030" and explains the philosophy: Adoptium builds LTS binaries for as long as the upstream OpenJDK source is actively maintained, so Temurin's date is in practice the OpenJDK 8 updates project's horizon. IBM Semeru Runtimes says the same thing in different words: IBM's end of service column is "the date when IBM expects upstream/OpenJDK maintenance to end", and all future dates are predictions. Amazon Corretto is Amazon's own commitment, "performance enhancements and security updates at no cost until end-of-life", quarterly, with a last planned update in October 2030. Azul Zulu is a commercial roadmap: Production Support to December 2030 under Azul's support plans, then two years of Extended Support to December 31, 2032 that Azul describes as help with migrating off the version. Free Zulu builds exist; the support dates attach to the paid plans.
All four are built from the same OpenJDK 8 updates source, verified against the Java compatibility test suite, and for the large majority of workloads interchangeable with each other and with Red Hat's and Oracle's builds. That is the fact that makes the Red Hat date manageable: a Java 8 application that cannot move off 8 can still move off a build whose support is ending.
How to check which Java 8 you are running
java -versionThe vendor name is in the output: "OpenJDK Runtime Environment (Red_Hat-1.8.0...)" on RHEL, "Temurin", "Corretto", "Zulu", "IBM Semeru Runtime", "BellSoft" or "Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment" for Oracle. On RHEL, rpm -q java-1.8.0-openjdk confirms the package is Red Hat's. For many hosts at once, an SBOM records the JDK as a purl; our SBOM end-of-life audit guide shows how to read them, and the EOL Checker and API resolve each vendor's build against the dates above.
What to do
On Red Hat's OpenJDK 8: three doors before November 30, 2026. Upgrade the application to a newer Red Hat build (17, 21 or 25; the support contract stays the RHEL subscription). Or, if the application is pinned to 8, replace the package with another vendor's Java 8 build that is free and supported to December 31, 2030: Temurin, Corretto or Semeru, all of which Red Hat's own page lists support for in some form. Or buy Red Hat's ELS-1 entitlement for OpenJDK 8, which Red Hat lists to December 2032.
On Oracle JDK 8 with a Java SE subscription: nothing changes in 2026; Extended Support, fee waived, runs to December 31, 2030. Plan the exit from 8 against that date.
On Oracle JDK 8 without a subscription, in production: the problem has been licensing since April 2019. Switching to Temurin or Corretto fixes both the licence and the patch stream in one rollout.
On Temurin, Corretto, Zulu or Semeru 8: supported to December 31, 2030 on each vendor's own terms above. Four years is a comfortable runway; it is not a reason to skip the Java 11 and 17 work that any move off 8 eventually requires.
Everyone: the per-vendor pages linked in the table carry every Java version with live status and are refreshed at every build from each vendor's published roadmap, so a change to any of these dates shows up there before it shows up here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Java 8 still supported in 2026?
Yes, by most of its distributors, and into the 2030s by several. Oracle lists Extended Support for Java SE 8 to December 31, 2030 with the uplift fee waived; Eclipse Temurin, Amazon Corretto, Azul Zulu and IBM Semeru Runtimes each list December 31, 2030 for their Java 8 builds. The nearest date is Red Hat's: full support for the Red Hat build of OpenJDK 8 ends on November 30, 2026, after which Red Hat offers a separately paid Extended Life Cycle Support phase.
When does Red Hat's OpenJDK 8 reach end of life?
Red Hat's OpenJDK Life Cycle and Support Policy lists the end of full support for OpenJDK 8 (1.8) on RHEL and on Windows as November 30, 2026. The same table lists an ELS-1 phase ending December 2032; Red Hat says a separate entitlement for ELS support is required to receive support during that phase. Red Hat's most recent OpenJDK 8 release is dated October 16, 2025.
Did Oracle JDK 8 reach end of life in March 2022?
March 31, 2022 was the end of Oracle Premier Support for Java SE 8, not the end of updates. Oracle's roadmap lists Extended Support to December 31, 2030 and says the Extended Support uplift fee is waived for Java SE 8 from March 2022 through December 2030, so Oracle Java SE subscribers keep receiving Oracle JDK 8 updates. Free public updates of Java SE 8 for commercial use ended with Oracle's April 2019 licensing change; personal and development use remains free under the OTN license, and Oracle says it will give at least 18 months notice before ending those public updates.
What should a Red Hat Java 8 estate move to before November 2026?
Either a newer Red Hat build of OpenJDK, which keeps the RHEL subscription as the support contract (OpenJDK 17 to December 31, 2027, OpenJDK 21 to December 31, 2029 and OpenJDK 25 to December 31, 2030 on Red Hat's table), or another vendor's Java 8 build if the application cannot leave 8: Temurin, Corretto and IBM Semeru Runtimes publish free Java 8 builds to December 31, 2030. Red Hat's own paid ELS-1 phase for OpenJDK 8 is the third option.
Related
- Oracle JDK 8 · Red Hat build of OpenJDK 8 · Eclipse Temurin 8 · Amazon Corretto 8 · Azul Zulu 8 · Liberica JDK 8 · IBM Semeru Runtimes 8 — live status and EOL Risk Score per distribution
- Java end-of-life dates by vendor — the same matrix for 11, 17, 21 and 25
- The Oracle Java licensing trap — what April 2019 changed for Java 8
- Java 17's September 2026 deadline — the same vendor-by-vendor shape for 17
- SBOM end-of-life audit — finding JDKs in an SBOM
- How we verify our dates — the rules every number on this site is held to