MariaDB Server 10.6 has been with us for a long time. It was the last MariaDB LTS released under the previous release model, and it has served many users, distributions, applications, and production environments very well.

But every maintained series eventually reaches the end of its maintenance lifetime.

MariaDB Community Server 10.6 will reach End of Life on 6 July 2026.

After that date, the MariaDB Foundation will no longer provide maintenance releases for MariaDB Community Server 10.6. That means no more bug fixes, no more security fixes, and no more corrective releases for that branch.

After reaching the EOL date, there will be one last binary 10.6 release at the end of July, and then it’s over!

If you are still using MariaDB 10.6, now is the time to plan your next steps.

Some of you recently saw that we released MariaDB Server 12.3 LTS, our latest Long Term Support release.

In the recent post thanking the contributors to the May 2026 MariaDB Server releases, we highlighted that those contributions were for MariaDB Server 12.3, 11.8, 11.4, 10.11, and 10.6.

With the release of MariaDB Server 12.3 LTS, we currently have five LTS series in the community lifecycle:

• MariaDB 10.6 (GA: 6 Jul 2021, EOL: 6 Jul 2026)
• MariaDB 10.11 (GA: 16 Feb 2023, EOL: 16 Feb 2028)
• MariaDB 11.4 (GA: 29 May 2024, EOL: 29 May 2029)
• MariaDB 11.8 (GA: 4 Jun 2025, EOL: 4 Jun 2028)
• MariaDB 12.3 (GA: 29 May 2026, EOL: 29 May 2029)

That is one too many.

You can notice that MariaDB 11.8 reaches Community EOL before MariaDB 11.4. That is because MariaDB 11.4 has a longer Community maintenance period, while MariaDB 11.8 follows the newer yearly LTS model with three years of Community maintenance. This means that we release the Community LTS binaries for 3 years; in parallel, the source code release period stays unchanged. [1][2]

Maintaining an LTS series is important work. It includes bug fixing, security reviews, release engineering, packaging, testing, documentation updates, and coordination across many contributors and teams. This work matters a lot, especially for users who rely on MariaDB in production.

But we also need to keep the maintenance effort sustainable and focused. Retiring MariaDB 10.6 from the community maintenance lifecycle allows us to concentrate our efforts on the newer LTS series.

If you are still running MariaDB 10.6, you should start planning an upgrade to a newer LTS release.

The best target depends on your environment, your application requirements, and your upgrade policy. For many users, MariaDB 10.11, 11.4, 11.8, or 12.3 may be appropriate choices. As always, please review the release notes, changelogs, and upgrade documentation carefully before moving production systems.

A good upgrade plan should include:

• checking application compatibility;
• reviewing configuration changes;
• testing the upgrade in a staging or development environment;
• verifying backups and rollback procedures;
• scheduling the production upgrade during a suitable maintenance window.

And of course, if you are staying on MariaDB 10.6 until the last possible moment, please make sure you are running the latest available 10.6 maintenance release.

MariaDB 10.6 has been an important release for the project and for the community. Many users adopted it because they wanted a stable, long-term MariaDB Server series, and many contributors helped keep it reliable over the years.

To everyone who reported bugs, reviewed patches, tested releases, maintained packages, improved documentation, helped users, or contributed code to MariaDB 10.6: thank you.

Your work made this LTS series useful and dependable for a very large number of users.

Now it is time to move forward.

Please plan your migration from MariaDB 10.6, and continue keeping your MariaDB installations maintained, secure, and up to date.

Enjoy MariaDB!