Umbraco support timeframes and end of life

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Christoph
Christoph
Tags: Umbraco CMS - Dec 12, 2023

[Updated September 2025]

The Umbraco CMS allows Born Digital to build easy to use tailor-made solutions for our clients. The great editor experience it brings out of the box allows us to focus our development efforts on the trickier requirements a web application might have like external API integrations.

One of the reasons why we have confidence in the Umbraco ecosystem is the clear communication from Umbraco HQ, including around support timeframes for the different versions of the product.

Umbraco have a clear roadmap with long-term support (LTS) versions that are aligned to LTS versions of Microsoft .NET. For example, Umbraco 13 is the current LTS version based on .NET 8, which is also an LTS version. The upcoming Umbraco 17 will be based on .NET 10, both LTS releases.

Support for specific versions

Note - instructions on how to find your Umbraco version are included later in this article. 

Umbraco 7 and Umbraco 8

Umbraco 7 reached end-of-life in September 2023, Umbraco 8 reached end-of-life in February 2025, which means that any newly discovered security vulnerability are not fixed. It is therefore not recommended to use Umbraco 7 or Umbraco 8 for any publicly available websites.

Umbraco 10

Umbraco 10 was a long-term support version built on .NET 6., it reached end-of-life in June 2025

Umbraco 13

Umbraco 13 is the current long-term support version and supported until December 2026. It is built on .NET 8.

It is recommended to upgrade to Umbraco 17 by December 2026.

Umbraco 17

The upcoming Umbraco 17 will be a long-term support release based on .NET 10 and is scheduled for release on 27 November 2025. It will be supported until November 2028.

Once released, there is an overlap of 1 year where both Umbraco 13 and 17 are actively supported. It is recommended to upgrade your Umbraco 13 site to Umbraco 17 by December 2026.

New backoffice
From Umbraco 14 onwards, Umbraco have implemented a new backoffice, replacing the outdated AngularJS frontend technology (version 1.x, not to be confused with the current Angular). Some features have been replaced, like the legacy Nested Content and Grid editors. Umbraco Plugins with an AngularJS interface need to be upgraded to work with the new backoffice UI.
Umbraco HQ set the expectation that this is the last major overhaul of Umbraco, completing what was started with the modernisation in Umbraco 8 and the replacement of ASP.NET Framework with ASP.NET Core in Umbraco 9.

Umbraco 9, 11-12, 14-16

Umbraco versions between LTS releases (9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, etc.) are standard-term support (STS) versions, which are only supported for 1 year from release.

We generally recommend using long-term support versions of Umbraco, unless there is a specific feature in a newer version that is needed for the functionality of your website.

Starting with Umbraco 9, the CMS is built on ASP.NET Core, which means a migration from 8 to a newer version is a significant undertaking. However, upgrades from sites on Umbraco 9 or newer have become a lot easier, for example an upgrade from Umbraco 10 to 13 can generally be completed within a day.

What about your website?

What does this mean for your current Umbraco website?

We understand that our clients have varying expectations about the life of their website. Any major upgrade or rebuild will need to be planned and budgeted for in advance so we would like to discuss the specifics of your site to keep you on a supported version of Umbraco. 

How to find out your current Umbraco version

When logged in to the Umbraco backoffice, click the Help icon (bottom left in Umbraco 7, top right in Umbraco 8 and newer), the slide out content will state the version number at the top.

Upgrade or Rebuild?

To decide if a website should be upgraded or rebuilt depends mainly on your answers to the following questions:

  1. Does your website still look and feel like a modern website or does it feel dated and in need of a refresh?

  2. How much content does your website contain? How much time would be required to content load all (relevant) content into a new CMS?

If you are happy with the look and feel of the site and have significant amounts of content, an upgrade sounds like the right option. We will review plugins of your site and advise what's involved in getting the site onto a long-term-supported version of Umbraco.

If you think your website needs a refresh, it might be a good opportunity to review the UX and sitemap and get a modern, slick and user-friendly frontend.

We are here to help you work through the options.

Born Digital is here to help

Since 2015, Born Digital has been building, upgrading, migrating, and re-building Umbraco websites since version 7 of Umbraco. If your site is built on Umbraco 7, we recommend that you start planning the future direction for your sites and we are available to help you investigate different options and timings. 

As a team we have have supported website projects across a range of requirements:

  • New Umbraco website design and development
  • Website upgrades / migrations / rebuilds to newer or current versions including minor and major releases
  • Inherited Umbraco websites that have been built by other agencies and delivered improvements in terms of administrative experience, performance, code, features, functionality or integrations
  • Migration of existing websites from other platforms such as WordPress to Umbraco CMS
  • Delivered simple brochure websites to complex multi-tenanted or multi language websites

Connect with our team today and we will guide, plan and support your website re-build.  You don’t need to be an existing customer of ours, if you require a new Umbraco web agency please get in touch.

We reccomend using a registered partner.

 

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