Moodle 5.0 Reaches End of Life on October 5 — and 5.1 Leaves General Support the Same Day
Moodle's release calendar is regular enough that its deadlines rarely make news, which is exactly how they get missed. On October 5, 2026, Moodle 5.0 receives its last security fix. General bug-fix support for 5.0 already ended on April 20, 2026; what ends in October is the eighteen-month security tail, after which a 5.0 site is unpatched for anything found from then on. The same day, Moodle 5.1 leaves general support (October 5, 2026) and enters its own security-only phase, which runs to April 19, 2027.
The dates, from Moodle's own releases page
Moodle publishes two end dates per release: general support (bug fixes for core bugs, twelve months for a standard release) and security support (security fixes only, eighteen months for a standard release and three years for a Long-Term Support release). Every row below matches that page as read on September 4, 2026.
| Version | Released | General support ends | Security support ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moodle 5.2 | April 20, 2026 | April 19, 2027 | October 4, 2027 |
| Moodle 5.1 | October 6, 2025 | October 5, 2026 | April 19, 2027 |
| Moodle 5.0 | April 14, 2025 | April 20, 2026 | October 5, 2026 |
| Moodle 4.5 LTS | October 7, 2024 | October 6, 2025 | October 4, 2027 |
| Moodle 4.4 | April 22, 2024 | April 21, 2025 | December 8, 2025 (past) |
The 4.5 LTS anomaly: older, and supported longer
The row that surprises people is 4.5. It is older than 5.0 and 5.1, yet its security support runs to October 4, 2027, a full year past 5.0 and six months past 5.1, because it is the current Long-Term Support release. A site that upgraded from 4.5 to 5.0 last year to stay current has, in lifecycle terms, moved backwards: 5.0 ends this October, and the site it left behind would still have been supported. That is not an argument for downgrading. It is an argument for choosing the next target deliberately: 5.2 (security fixes to October 4, 2027, general support to April 19, 2027) or the next LTS when Moodle names it. Moodle's own guidance for any version past security support is one sentence: update to a currently supported version.
Who is actually on 5.0
Moodle's cadence is a release every April and October, and institutions upgrade in the summer between academic years. Anyone who did the summer 2025 upgrade landed on 5.0, the newest release at the time. Those sites are now one release behind with four weeks left, and the next low-risk upgrade window is not until summer 2027. The practical choices are an upgrade to 5.2 during the October reading week or winter break, or an explicit, documented decision to run 5.0 unpatched until then, which is a risk-acceptance an information-security office should sign rather than a helpdesk. Hosted Moodle (MoodleCloud and Moodle Partner hosting) is upgraded by the provider; self-hosted and university-run installations are the population this deadline is about.
The four-week checklist
- Find the version. Site administration → Notifications shows it, or read
version.phpin the web root. Do this for every Moodle instance, including the departmental ones nobody put on the inventory. - Check plugins first. Moodle upgrades fail on third-party plugins, not on core. Confirm every installed plugin has a release for 5.2 before scheduling anything; retire the ones that do not.
- Upgrade to 5.2, not 5.1. 5.1 leaves general support on the same October 5 date and has only six months of security fixes after that. Going to 5.1 buys one extra upgrade, not time.
- If you cannot move by October 5, write it down. Which sites, what data they hold, the date the upgrade is scheduled, and who accepted the interval. An unpatched learning platform holding student records is the kind of finding auditors look for first.
Every Moodle version's dates, updated as Moodle publishes them, are on our Moodle lifecycle page; the Stack Scanner reads a pasted inventory against the full dataset, Moodle included.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does Moodle 5.0 reach end of life?
Moodle 5.0's security support ends October 5, 2026. General bug-fix support ended April 20, 2026. After October 5 the release receives no security fixes; Moodle's guidance is to update to a currently supported version.
Is Moodle 5.1 still supported after October 5, 2026?
Partly. Moodle 5.1's general support ends on October 5, 2026, after which it receives security fixes only, until April 19, 2027.
Why is Moodle 4.5 supported longer than 5.0 and 5.1?
Moodle 4.5 is a Long-Term Support release and receives security fixes for three years, to October 4, 2027. Standard releases such as 5.0 and 5.1 receive twelve months of general support and eighteen months of security support in total.
What should a site on Moodle 5.0 upgrade to?
Moodle 5.2, released April 20, 2026, with general support to April 19, 2027 and security support to October 4, 2027. Upgrading to 5.1 instead gains only six months of security-only coverage.
Where are these dates published?
Moodle's releases page at moodledev.io/general/releases lists the release date, general support end and security support end for every version. The dates in this article were checked against that page on 2026-09-04 and are bound to the same data our Moodle lifecycle page uses.