RHEL End of Life Dates: Complete Red Hat Enterprise Linux Lifecycle Guide

By Scott Bissett  ·  Last updated: September 5, 2026  ·  Covers RHEL 7, 8, 9, and 10

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) follows a strict 10-year support lifecycle. Knowing exactly when your version reaches end of life (EOL) — and which minor release you need to be on — is critical for maintaining security compliance and support eligibility. This guide covers every active and recently retired RHEL major and minor release, end of life dates, lifecycle phases, and what your team should do before support ends.

Key Dates at a Glance

• RHEL 10: full support ends 2030-05-31; maintenance support ends 2035-05-31; extended life cycle support ends 2039-05-31
• RHEL 9: full support ends 2027-05-31; maintenance support ends 2032-05-31; extended life cycle support ends 2036-05-31
• RHEL 8: full support ends 2024-05-31; maintenance support ends 2029-05-31; extended life cycle support ends 2033-05-31
• RHEL 7: full support ends 2019-08-06; maintenance support ends 2024-06-30; extended life cycle support ends 2029-05-31
• RHEL 6: full support ends 2016-05-10; maintenance support ends 2020-11-30; extended life cycle support ends 2024-06-30
• RHEL 5: full support ends 2013-01-08; maintenance support ends 2017-03-31; extended life cycle support ends 2020-11-30

RHEL EOL Risk Scores

An end-of-life date on its own does not tell you how urgent a version is. We publish an EOL Risk Score (0–100) for every tracked version, combining four factors: how long past — or how close to — end of life it is, the attack surface of the software class, whether CISA lists the product in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and whether commercial extended support exists as a fallback.

Two things worth reading out of these numbers. First, a supported version is not a zero-risk version — RHEL 8 and 9 score 50 despite years of support remaining, because operating systems carry a large attack surface and Red Hat products appear in CISA's actively-exploited catalog. Second, RHEL 7 scores 90 — Critical — because its recency factor has already reached maximum: it has been past end of maintenance since June 2024, and that component of the score accumulates with time rather than resetting. That is the difference between a date and a risk measure — the date is fixed, the exposure is not.

Scores update automatically as lifecycle dates pass and the CISA KEV catalog changes. Live values for every version are on the RHEL product page, and the full methodology — including how each factor is weighted — is documented on the EOL Risk Score page.

RHEL Major Version Lifecycle Summary

Every RHEL Version: Release, Support and EOL Dates

The table below is the complete Red Hat Enterprise Linux version matrix. When people say a RHEL version is "EOL," the date they mean is the end of Maintenance Support — that is when Red Hat stops shipping security patches under a standard subscription, and it is the date compliance scanners and auditors check against. Red Hat's paid extensions — ELS today, and from 2026 Extended Life Cycle Premium with its no-end-date Long-Life Add-On — continue critical patches beyond that on a separate subscription; they are not the standard subscription, and the Maintenance date is the one auditors check. For live per-version detail, minor releases, and risk scores, see the RHEL page on endoflife.ai.

Understanding the RHEL Lifecycle Phases

Red Hat defines three main support phases for each major RHEL release:

Phase 1 – Full Support (Years 1–5)

During full support, Red Hat actively develops the platform: new hardware enablement, new functionality, and full bug and security fix coverage. Minor releases (e.g., RHEL 9.1, 9.2) are published roughly every 6 months during this phase. This is when RHEL is at its most capable and fully supported state.

Phase 2 – Maintenance Support (Years 5–10)

Once full support ends, the major version enters Maintenance Support. Only the final minor release (e.g., RHEL 8.10, RHEL 9.x) receives updates during this phase — those updates are limited to critical and important security advisories (CVEs) and select urgent bug fixes. No new hardware support or feature development occurs.

Phase 3 – Paid Extension: ELS, Extended Life Cycle Premium and the Long-Life Add-On (Optional)

After the 10-year lifecycle ends, Red Hat sells extended coverage on a separate subscription. The Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) add-on is the offering subscribers see today: it runs to May 31, 2029 for RHEL 7, May 31, 2033 for RHEL 8 and May 31, 2036 for RHEL 9. In April 2026 Red Hat introduced Extended Life Cycle Premium, which it describes as a predictable 14-year life cycle for major RHEL releases and which replaces ELS starting with RHEL 8.10 when RHEL 8's Maintenance phase ends on May 31, 2029. In May 2026 it added the Long-Life Add-On: a yearly renewal on top of Extended Life Cycle Premium with no pre-determined end date, which Red Hat says is available for any specific RHEL release. Every one of these delivers critical and important security fixes only, not features or new hardware, and Red Hat's published policy page so far lists Long-Life terms only for RHEL 6 (annual terms running to the end of 2030) — read the current policy for your release before pricing a multi-year plan on it. What changed in 2026 is that the extension is no longer time-boxed by Red Hat; whether it should be time-boxed by you is the question the options below answer.

RHEL 9 Minor Version EOL Dates

RHEL 9 is the current recommended major release. Red Hat publishes minor releases approximately every 6 months. Each minor release is supported for 6 months after its successor ships — meaning you should always be on the latest minor version.

Even-numbered minors (9.2, 9.4, 9.6, 9.8 and 9.10) are the Extended Update Support and Extended Life Cycle-eligible releases in Red Hat's life-cycle policy: a specific minor such as RHEL 9.8 keeps receiving fixes under those add-ons after its successor ships, while odd minors such as 9.7 and 9.9 end when the next minor arrives. The RHEL 9 lifecycle as a whole ends with maintenance support on May 31, 2032.

RHEL 8 Minor Version EOL Dates

RHEL 8 entered Maintenance Support on May 31, 2024. RHEL 8.10 is the final minor release of the RHEL 8 series and will receive security and bug fix updates until May 31, 2029. All earlier RHEL 8 minor versions are end of life.

RHEL 10 — Current Recommended Release

RHEL 10 is Red Hat's latest major release, published on May 20, 2025. It introduces significant platform updates including improved security defaults, support for newer hardware, updated toolchains, and a major shift to image-based system management. RHEL 10 is the recommended target for new deployments and for teams planning migrations from RHEL 8.

RHEL 7 — End of Life

RHEL 7 reached the end of its Maintenance Support phase on Jun 30, 2024. Red Hat has extended the paid Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) add-on for RHEL 7 until May 31, 2029, so a security-patch bridge is still available for subscribers who purchase it. Without ELS, RHEL 7 systems receive no security updates at all. Treat ELS as breathing room for a migration, not a destination — moving to RHEL 9 or RHEL 10 is strongly recommended.

RHEL vs. Downstream Distributions

Several distributions are based on RHEL source code and follow similar (but not identical) lifecycles:

• AlmaLinux — matches RHEL lifecycle dates
• Rocky Linux — matches RHEL lifecycle dates
• Oracle Linux — follows RHEL major lifecycle with Oracle Lifetime Support option
• CentOS Stream — now a rolling preview of future RHEL versions, not a downstream clone

How to Check Your Current RHEL Version

Run the following command on any RHEL system to check your exact version:

cat /etc/redhat-release
# Example output: Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 9.8 (Plow)

Or for more detail:

cat /etc/os-release

What Happens When RHEL Support Ends

When a RHEL version passes its Maintenance Support date, Red Hat stops shipping security errata for it. Three things follow, and they are worth separating because they carry different urgency:

• New CVEs stop being fixed. The machine keeps running exactly as before — nothing breaks on the EOL date. What changes is that every vulnerability disclosed from that day forward stays open on your system permanently, unless you buy extended support or migrate. Risk accrues silently rather than arriving as an outage.
• Auditors treat it as a finding, not a failure. Frameworks such as PCI DSS, HIPAA and SOC 2 require that known vulnerabilities be remediated within defined windows. Unsupported software cannot meet that requirement through patching, so it has to be handled with documented compensating controls and accepted risk instead. Running EOL RHEL is not automatically "non-compliant" — but it converts a routine patching control into an exception you must justify at every audit.
• Your support contract narrows. Red Hat will still take your call on an EOL release under some subscriptions, but fixes for newly discovered issues are out of scope. Escalation paths that assume "Red Hat will patch it" no longer hold.

Your Four Options When RHEL Support Ends

There are four realistic paths, and the right one depends far more on how long you need the system to survive than on the version you are running today.

How to choose in one question

How many more years does this system need to run?

• Under a year — extended support is usually cheaper than an emergency migration, and lets you retire the system on your own schedule.
• One to three years — migrate. Extended support bought repeatedly costs more than doing the project once, and the project only gets harder as the version ages.
• Indefinitely — migrate to a current major version and plan the next migration now. Systems described as "temporary" are the ones that reach EOL twice. For a workload that genuinely will never move, price Red Hat's Long-Life Add-On against the migration honestly — since 2026 it is an option, not only a bridge.

One thing worth saying plainly, because vendors selling extended support rarely will: extended support is often the more expensive choice over a multi-year horizon. It is the right answer when a deadline is genuinely unreachable or a system is frozen by certification or a third-party application — not as a default. Compare the annual fee against the one-time cost of migrating before you commit to either.

For the full version-by-version decision flow, including what teams in each situation typically weigh, see our RHEL decision guide: upgrade, Red Hat ELS, or third-party.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Resources

• Is RHEL 8.10 / 9.4 / 9.6 / 9.7 still supported? The minor-version trap — every 8.x and 9.x minor release with EUS dates, hand-verified against Red Hat
• RHEL version data on endoflife.ai
• Debian End of Life Guide
• Node.js End of Life Guide
• PHP End of Life Guide