Microsoft Reminds Devs of .NET 7 End of Support

Microsoft issued a reminder that .NET 7 will reach end of support on May 14, 2024, less than two months from now.

“.NET 7 will reach end of support on May 14, 2024,” Microsoft’s Rahul Bhandari writes in the announcement post. “After that, Microsoft will no longer provide servicing updates, including security fixes or technical support, for .NET 7. You’ll need to update to .NET 8 before this date into stay supported.”

.NET was first released in November 2022. As a standard term support (STS) version of .NET, it is supported for 18 months or, as Microsoft puts it, “STS releases are supported for six months after a subsequent STS or LTS release.” The most recent release, .NET 8, is an LTS release—meaning it is supported for three years—that first shipped in November 2023.

As Bhandari notes, May 14 is that month’s Patch Tuesday, and that day could bring with it a final software update for .NET 7. Either way, .NET 7-based applications will continue to work past May 14, but Microsoft will not issue any more security updates for the platform, so continuing forward with .NET 7 is risky. Microsoft recommends that developers upgrade .NET 7-based apps to .NET 8 as soon as possible, of course.

Related to this, Visual Studio versions 2022 17.6 and 17.4 will receive a servicing update in June in which the .NET 7 component will be made optional and is no longer supported. At that time, only the .NET 8 and .NET 6 will be supported. (In case it’s not obvious, .NET 6 will be supported past May 14 because that release is an LTS version, and is supported until November 12, 2024.)

You can learn more about the .NET support lifecycle on the .NET website.