ROS Noetic Is EOL —
and ROS 1 ended with it.
Quick answer: ROS Noetic Ninjemys — the final ROS 1 distribution — reached end of life in May 2025 (officially May 1, 2025, per the endoflife.date dataset), more than a year ago. Noetic was the last distribution of ROS 1 ever released, so its EOL didn't just retire a version: it ended the entire ROS 1 line. There are no further ROS 1 releases, no security patches, and no maintained migration window. The path forward is ROS 2.
ROS 1 end-of-life timeline
| Distribution | Released | End of Life | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kinetic Kame | May 2016 | May 2021 | EOL |
| Lunar Loggerhead | May 2017 | May 2019 | EOL |
| Melodic Morenia | May 2018 | Apr 2023 | EOL |
| Noetic Ninjemys | May 2020 | May 2025 | EOL — final ROS 1 release |
Live dates for every distribution are on the ROS lifecycle page, regenerated at every deploy.
What Noetic EOL actually means
End of life for Noetic means the ROS maintainers no longer publish updates of any kind: no security fixes, no bug fixes, no dependency rebuilds. Because Noetic targets Ubuntu 20.04 — which has also exited standard support — teams still on Noetic are accumulating unpatched CVEs at two layers simultaneously: the middleware and the operating system under it. This is the classic CVE blind spot: every vulnerability disclosed against either layer since EOL is public, documented, and permanently unfixed on your stack.
Migration: ROS 2 is the only forward path
With no ROS 1 successor, migration means moving to ROS 2 — current LTS distributions are supported on modern Ubuntu LTS releases with multi-year windows. The migration is real work: ROS 2 replaces the ROS 1 master/node architecture with DDS-based communication, and core APIs differ. Practical sequencing for most teams:
- Inventory ROS 1 dependencies — many popular packages have ROS 2 ports; some don't. The gaps define your migration cost.
- Bridge during transition — the
ros1_bridgepackage lets ROS 1 and ROS 2 nodes interoperate, enabling incremental migration instead of a big-bang rewrite. - Target an LTS distribution — pick the current ROS 2 LTS so your next support window is measured in years.
- Pair the OS migration — moving off Ubuntu 20.04 at the same time clears both EOL layers in one program.