.NET 6 will reach end of support on Nov 12, 2024. After that, Microsoft will no longer provide updates for .NET 6. Security fixes and technical support will no longer be available for .NET 6. You’ll need to update to .NET 8 before this date to stay supported.

Commercial support for .NET is also provided by enterprise Linux companies, which may have other policies (see later section).

Support Policy

.NET 6 is an LTS release, supported for 36 months, ending on November 12, 2024.

November 12th is a patch Tuesday release day. .NET 6 may be updated one last time, on that day, if there is a known critical issue.

What to expect

You can expect the following after .NET 6 reaches end of support:

• Applications that use this version will continue to run.
• No new security updates will be issued for .NET 6.
• Continuing to use an unsupported version will expose you to security vulnerabilities.
• You may not be able to access technical support for .NET 6 applications.
• You will start getting NETSDK1138 build warnings when targeting .NET 6 from a later SDK.
• You will get “gold bar” warnings in Visual Studio when targeting .NET 6.

Visual Studio Compatibility

Starting with the January 2025 servicing update for Visual Studio 2022 17.8, Visual Studio 2022 17.10, and Visual Studio 2022 17.12, the .NET 6 component in Visual Studio will be marked as out of support. Existing installations won’t be affected.

You must retarget to .NET 8 (or later) to stay supported.

You can use the “remove out of support components” option to remove .NET 6 from existing Visual Studio installations.

Enterprise Linux Support

.NET is also supported by enterprise Linux companies, who have their own support policies.

• .NET provided by Red Hat is supported according to .NET Life Cycle.
• .NET provided by Canonical in Ubuntu is supported according to the following statement.

“Under the Ubuntu Pro support plans, all packages in Ubuntu LTS main and universe components get five years of standard support and ten years of security coverage support.”

Upgrading to .NET 8

You can upgrade your app to .NET 8 by changing the value of the TargetFramework property in your project file to net8.0. You will also need to update your development and hosting environments. This process is covered in more detail in Upgrade to a new .NET version.

Using .NET 6 apps

If you’re using a .NET 6 app, we recommend reaching out to the software developer or vendor who produced it to ask if an updated version that uses .NET 8 is available.

Azure Marketplace VM Image Users

Azure Marketplace media images for Windows Server 2022 currently include .NET 6, but going forward will not include a .NET version with the image (.NET 8 and later are not included with the image). Therefore, if you previously relied on the Azure Marketplace image to include the .NET 6 runtime then going forward you will need to handle the .NET deployment yourself. See the .NET Deployment Guide for more information about deploying .NET in your environment.

Based on customer feedback about this breaking change we have decided to provide customers more time to handle the .NET 8 runtime deployment and upgrade to .NET 8. Microsoft will provide security updates for .NET 6 in the Azure Marketplace media image beyond the official end of support date for an additional 6 months through May 13, 2025.

Resources

• .NET downloads
• .NET Deployment
• .NET Support Policy
• .NET 7 Breaking Changes
• .NET 8 Breaking Changes
• .NET Upgrade Assistant
• Migrate from ASP.NET Core in .NET 6 to .NET 8
• Upgrading .NET MAUI from .NET 6 to .NET 8

Closing

.NET 6 will be reaching end of support on November 12, 2024. After that date, no additional updates or technical support will be offered. We strongly recommend you start migrating your .NET 6 apps to .NET 8.