On 1 June 2026 Sitecore changed its support model. Since then the change has been described in a lot of different ways, some of them wrong. On 31 December 2026 a second, separate thing happens — and for organisations still running Sitecore XP, it is the one that actually bites.
This article sets out exactly what changed in June, exactly what changes at the end of December, and where each version stands — taken from Sitecore’s own published support lifecycle, not from secondary commentary.
Sitecore runs three support phases — Mainstream, Extended and Sustaining — lasting three, six and eight years from a version’s general availability date. On 1 June 2026, two things that used to be included in Extended Support stopped being included: assistance with production incidents, and security updates and fixes. Both now carry Sitecore’s “contact your account representative” marker instead. Nothing else in the model changed.
On 31 December 2026, Sitecore XP 10.0 and 10.1 leave Extended Support and enter Sustaining — where security updates are not available at all. Sitecore XP 9.1 leaves Sustaining on the same date and exits the lifecycle entirely. June put a question mark over security fixes for those versions. December removes them.
Sitecore’s support matrix marks each service in each phase one of three ways: included, not available, or a currency marker defined as “contact your Sitecore Account Representative to discuss options”.
The following two terms changed, both in Extended Support:
Everything else is identical. The whole Mainstream column is unchanged. The whole Sustaining column is unchanged. Documentation and knowledge base access, assistance with version upgrades, hotfixes, installation support and compatibility fixes all sit exactly where they sat before. So do the phase lengths: still three years Mainstream, six Extended, eight Sustaining.
That narrowness matters, because the change has often been reported as a wholesale move to paid support. It is not. It is two services, in one phase.
Here is the part that gets lost. In the Sustaining phase, security updates and fixes are marked not available — and always were.
So for 10.0 and 10.1, the two dates do very different things:
For 9.1, 31 December is the end of the published lifecycle altogether. After that date the version appears in Sitecore’s table only as history.
If your plan for 2027 assumes you can buy security coverage for a 10.0 or 10.1 estate the way you might have in 2026, the published model does not support that assumption.
Today, only two versions of Sitecore XP are in Mainstream Support.
| Phase | Today | From 1 January 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Mainstream | 10.4, 10.5 | 10.4, 10.5 |
| Extended | 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 | 10.2, 10.3 |
| Sustaining | 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 | 9.2, 9.3, 10.0, 10.1 |
| Outside the lifecycle | 9.0 and earlier | 9.1 and earlier |
The individual end dates behind that, from Sitecore’s table: Extended Support ends 31 December 2026 for 10.0 and 10.1, 31 December 2027 for 10.2, and 31 December 2028 for 10.3. Mainstream Support runs to 31 December 2027 for 10.4 and 31 December 2029 for 10.5. On the older side, Sustaining ended 31 December 2025 for both 9.0 and 8.2, and 31 December 2023 for 8.0 and 8.1.
This catches people out more than anything else in the model. The three, six and eight year phases are counted from the version’s general availability date — not from the date you implemented it.
Sitecore XP 10.1 became generally available in February 2021. Its Extended Support ends on 31 December 2026 for everyone, whether you went live on it in 2021 or in 2024. A team that deployed 10.1 three years after release did not get six years of Extended Support; they got what was left.
It is worth checking your version’s GA date rather than your project’s. The two are often years apart, and only one of them is on Sitecore’s timetable.
Support is one reason teams look at an upgrade, but it is not the only thing that moves. It is worth being precise here, because the marketing around Sitecore and AI is doing a lot of work at the moment and the detail matters.
SitecoreAI is Sitecore’s SaaS content management system — in Sitecore’s own words, “formerly XM Cloud”. Getting onto it is a migration, not an upgrade, and upgrading your XP estate does not put you there. Sitecore offers XM and XP customers an AI-assisted migration workflow for that journey, but it is a route onto a different product.
What is available on self-hosted XP is a separate thing: a module called Sitecore Stream for Platform DXP, which installs onto an existing XP deployment. It adds AI-assisted content generation, translation at item, page and tree level, content and media metadata extraction, and a brand-aware assistant.
Two conditions attach to it. Sitecore documents a minimum of XP 10.2 or later, and it requires an active Sitecore Stream subscription — Sitecore’s guidance is to speak to your account manager. Sitecore does not publish whether that subscription is included with an XP licence or priced separately, so treat it as a question to ask rather than an assumption to make. Some capabilities sit in a free tier; the assistant and brand kits require the premium one.
The useful consequence is this. If you are on 10.0 or 10.1, the AI threshold and the support cliff sit in the same place: you are below both, and one upgrade clears both. If you are already on 10.2 or 10.3, you are above the AI threshold today — so this is not a reason to move, and your reason, when it comes, will be the support date rather than the feature set.
One caution worth stating plainly: 10.5 is not an AI release. Its release notes list no AI features. The capability comes from the Stream module and its subscription, not from the version number, and anyone upgrading purely in the expectation of finding AI in the box will be disappointed.
“Extended Support is now paid.” Sitecore’s document does not say paid, and publishes no price. It says contact your account representative to discuss options. That may well resolve into a commercial arrangement, but if you are building a business case, quote what the document says rather than what the internet says it says. The distinction matters the moment someone checks.
“Upgrade assistance covers us whatever we have built.” Sitecore’s notes are specific: assistance with version upgrades is provided when applying official upgrade instructions. A heavily customised estate can sit outside that, which is usually the estate most in need of help.
“The dates are fixed.” Sitecore states it can update the document at its own discretion, with changes taking effect 30 days after posting. Plan against the published dates, but check them again before you commit budget to a plan that depends on one.
If you are responsible for a Sitecore estate, the useful work between now and the end of the year is small and mostly not technical.
It leaves Extended Support and enters Sustaining Support, which runs to 31 December 2028. In Sustaining, Sitecore marks security updates and fixes as not available. Documentation access and assistance with version upgrades continue, and production incident assistance carries the account-representative marker.
No. Sitecore XP 10.5 was released in August 2026 with Mainstream Support running to 31 December 2029 and Sustaining Support to 31 December 2034. What is ending is support for specific older versions, on a published schedule, not the product line.
No. Upgrading in place to 10.4 or 10.5 puts you back into Mainstream Support until 2027 or 2029 respectively, and your existing XP licence covers it. Moving to SitecoreAI is a strategic choice, not a support requirement. AI tooling for self-hosted XP is available separately through the Sitecore Stream module, on XP 10.2 or later and with its own subscription.
If you have access to the Content Management server, the version and update level are visible in the admin interface. If nobody currently has that access — which is more common than you would think on estates built years ago by a partner who has since moved on — it can also be established from the outside, approximately, and confirmed properly from within.
Nothing urgent before December. Both are in Extended Support, which means security updates carry the account-representative marker rather than being included, and Extended Support runs to the end of 2027 for 10.2 and the end of 2028 for 10.3. The step from there to 10.4 or 10.5 is usually smaller than people expect, which makes it worth scoping before it becomes urgent.
We have been delivering Sitecore for 18 years, across every version from 6 to 10 — a Platinum partner with more than 100 XP implementations and over 30 Sitecore MVP awards across the team. That history is the point: we recognise what we are looking at, and we have no need to steer you towards a particular answer. Plenty of our recommendations are to upgrade in place, and some are to do nothing yet.
If you need the version question settled and costed, our Sitecore Exposure Review confirms your exact version and patch level, maps your security and licence position, and gives you three costed options with a recommendation. If you already know where you stand and want to plan the move, see Sitecore Upgrade Services. If you are weighing up who should do the work, our guide to choosing a Sitecore partner is written to be useful whoever you pick.
