Longhorn 1.9 End of Life: January 24, 2027 and the Upgrade Path
Longhorn 1.9 reaches end of life on January 24, 2027. The date is in SUSE's Longhorn v1.9.x support matrix, which covers the Longhorn v1.9.0 Community release and the SUSE Storage 1.9 patch releases that followed it. Longhorn 1.9 was released on May 27, 2025. After the end-of-life date, SUSE's matrix says its support plans do not apply to the release.
What ends on January 24, 2027
SUSE's matrix divides a Longhorn release's life into phases. From general availability to End of Maintenance (EOM), a release is fully supported and maintained, including code-level fixes. Between EOM and End of Life (EOL), SUSE provides no further code-level maintenance except critical security-related fixes on a request basis; support continues as troubleshooting and upgrade recommendations. For the 1.9 releases the EOM date was January 24, 2026, one year before their end of life.
After EOL, the matrix says customers may keep using the release within their licence terms, but SUSE's support plans no longer apply to it.
The community side ended earlier. The Longhorn project's release schedule and support page says that, from 1.8 on, community support for a minor version x.y ends when x.(y+1).1 is released. Longhorn 1.10.1 has been released, so 1.9 is already outside community support under that rule; the date on this page is SUSE's.
SUSE's end-of-life dates for 1.9 and the lines after it
| Longhorn | End of life (SUSE matrix) | Supported upgrade from |
|---|---|---|
| 1.9 | January 24, 2027 | 1.8 |
| 1.10 | May 12, 2027 | 1.9 |
| 1.11 | September 12, 2027 | 1.10 |
| 1.12 | February 13, 2028 | 1.11 |
Longhorn 1.13, released on September 29, 2026, upgrades from 1.12. Longhorn 1.8 reached end of life on March 3, 2026. For 1.9 through 1.12, SUSE's matrix sets each line's End of Maintenance one year before its End of Life. Every version is on the Longhorn page.
The upgrade path from 1.9
Each upgrade is normally two steps in Longhorn's documentation: upgrade Longhorn Manager, then upgrade the Longhorn Engine, either from the Longhorn UI or with the automatic engine upgrade option. Stopping at 1.10 does not buy much time, because 1.10 reaches end of life on May 12, 2027.
- 1.9 to 1.10: migrate old custom resources first. The
v1beta1Longhorn API was removed in v1.10.0. Longhorn's 1.10.0 important notes strongly advise a manual custom resource migration before upgrading from 1.9 to 1.10 for clusters first deployed with a version earlier than v1.3.0, and say every Longhorn CRD must list onlyv1beta2instoredVersionsbefore the upgrade. - 1.10 to 1.11, 1.11 to 1.12, 1.12 to 1.13. Each is a separate upgrade; read the important notes of each target version before starting it.
Before every hop, the documentation lists manual checks: detach all V2 Data Engine volumes and stop their replicas (the V2 Data Engine does not support live upgrades), avoid upgrading while volumes are in the Faulted status or while a failed BackingImage exists, and it recommends a Longhorn system backup before the upgrade.
SUSE Storage and SUSE Rancher Prime
From 1.9, SUSE's matrix uses Community and Prime instead of Latest and Stable. It defines Prime as SUSE Rancher Prime, SUSE's enterprise container management platform, and SUSE Storage as the cloud-native storage product that is part of it. In the 1.9 matrix, Longhorn v1.9.0 is the Community release and the later 1.9 patch releases are SUSE Storage Prime releases. The support phases above are SUSE's terms for those customers; SUSE's matrix lists the same supported upgrade steps, one minor version at a time.
What to do
- Find every cluster on Longhorn 1.9, including installs from the Rancher Apps & Marketplace chart and Helm releases pinned to a 1.9 version.
- Run the
v1beta1check before the 1.10 upgrade on any cluster first installed before v1.3.0. - Plan the hops to 1.12 or 1.13 as one project, with a system backup before each, and finish before January 24, 2027.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does Longhorn 1.9 reach end of life?
SUSE's Longhorn v1.9.x support matrix gives the 1.9 releases an end-of-life date of January 24, 2027. Their End of Maintenance date was January 24, 2026; between the two, SUSE provides no further code-level maintenance except critical security-related fixes on a request basis.
Can I upgrade Longhorn 1.9 straight to the newest version?
No. Starting with v1.5.0, Longhorn only supports upgrades from one minor version to the next, and an upgrade that skips a minor version fails automatically. From 1.9 the path is 1.10, then 1.11, then 1.12, then 1.13, one upgrade at a time.
Is Longhorn 1.9 still supported by the community?
The Longhorn project's release policy says that, from 1.8 on, community support for a minor version x.y ends when version x.(y+1).1 is released. Longhorn 1.10.1 has been released, so community support for 1.9 has ended under that rule. The January 24, 2027 date is SUSE's end of life for the 1.9 releases in its support matrix.
Related
- Longhorn — every version and its dates
- Rancher 2.11 end of life — SUSE's dates for the Rancher 2.x lines
- Kubernetes — version dates for the clusters Longhorn runs on