October 2026: Microsoft’s Deadline Month — Every Retirement in One Place

Lifecycle · UK Buyer’s Guide

One date, not one month

October is Microsoft’s traditional retirement month, and 2026 is the heaviest year on record. But the calendar is misleading. Almost everything lands on a single Tuesday.

13 October 2026 is Patch Tuesday — the last one for a remarkable amount of software. Microsoft schedules end-of-support dates to fall on Patch Tuesdays so that the final security update and the end of the lifecycle are the same event. That means there is no grace period, no tapering off, and no final round of fixes the following month.

Here is everything that ends on that day, taken directly from Microsoft’s lifecycle documentation.

If you’re a home user, three of these apply to you

Office 2021 stops being patched

This is the one that affects the most people, and the one most buyers don’t see coming — because Office 2021 was sold under an assumption that turned out to be wrong.

Every Office release from 2007 through 2019 received ten years of support: five mainstream, five extended. Microsoft changed that quietly for Office 2021. It gets five years total, with no extended phase at all. If you bought Office 2021 in 2021 expecting a decade because that was the established pattern, the assumption was reasonable. It was also wrong.

The apps keep working on 14 October. Word opens documents, Excel calculates, Outlook sends mail. What stops is patching — and Office files remain one of the most common malware delivery routes there is. Our full breakdown of what Office 2021 end of support actually means covers the security and UK GDPR implications in detail.

Windows 10 ESU runs out — and there is no second year

Windows 10 itself went out of support on 14 October 2025. The consumer Extended Security Updates programme bought home users exactly one more year, and that year ends on 13 October 2026.

Two details catch people out. First, 13 October is both the last day you can enrol and the last day updates are issued — enrolling in September buys you weeks, not a year. Second, unlike the commercial ESU programme, which runs in three annual tranches through 2028, the consumer programme has no Year 2. When it ends, it ends.

If you’re still on Windows 10, read why there is no consumer ESU Year 2 and, if your machine will take it, how to upgrade to Windows 11 for free. If it won’t, your options on unsupported hardware are narrower than they were a year ago.

Windows 11 24H2 reaches end of servicing

This is the deadline almost nobody is talking about, and it will catch out people who think they’re safe because they upgraded.

Windows 11 version 24H2 — the release most consumer PCs shipped with through 2025 — stops receiving updates on 13 October 2026 on Home and Pro editions. Enterprise and Education editions get until October 2027. The fix is free and takes one feature update, but you have to actually take it. Open Settings, then Windows Update, and check which version you’re on before October.

Publisher’s last day

Microsoft Publisher is being retired from Microsoft 365 in October 2026, and Publisher 2021 and Publisher LTSC 2021 both reach end of support on 13 October. After that date there is no supported version of Publisher anywhere in Microsoft’s catalogue. It is not being replaced.

We’ll be straight with you about the awkward part, because you’ll find it out anyway. Office Professional Plus 2021 is the last suite that includes Publisher — and it goes out of support on the same day Publisher does. Buying it now to get Publisher means buying a product with a handful of weeks of security patches left. It will keep running indefinitely, and for someone who needs to open legacy .pub files on an offline machine that may be an acceptable trade. As a way to keep Publisher in a working business, it isn’t.

The realistic path is to get your files out while you still have a working copy. We’ve covered what to do with .pub files before October 2026, how to convert them to PDF or Word, and which alternatives are worth moving to.

If you run a business, add these to the list

The consumer deadlines get the headlines, but October 2026 is heavier on the business side — and some of it has already happened.

If Project Server was part of your estate, its July retirement sits alongside the wider Project Online retirement — a separate migration with its own deadline, and one that needs planning rather than a licence purchase.

What upgrading actually costs

For most people reading this, the October deadline resolves into one question: replace the perpetual licence, or move to a subscription. Here is the five-year cost per user, using Microsoft’s current UK commercial pricing after the July 2026 increase.

The perpetual licence stops costing money. The subscription doesn’t. That gap is the entire argument, and it widens every year — which is why we’ve set out how to build a 2026/27 software budget around one-off purchases rather than renewals.

The honest counterpoint: Office 2024 has its own end-of-support date, 9 October 2029. Buying today gets you roughly three years of patches, not five. Even allowing for buying again in 2029, the arithmetic still favours the perpetual route for one or two users — but you should know the date exists rather than discover it the way Office 2021 buyers just did.

Your 65-day checklist

There are nine weeks between now and 13 October. That is enough time to do this properly, and not enough to keep ignoring it.

1. Find out what you’re actually running. In any Office app, go to File, then Account. The version is listed under “About”. If it says 2021 — or anything older — you’re on the clock.
2. Check your Windows version. Press Windows + R, type winver, press Enter. If it reads 24H2 on Home or Pro, take the current feature update before October. If it says Windows 10, you have a bigger decision.
3. Decide on Windows 10 now, not in October. If your machine meets the Windows 11 requirements, the upgrade is free. If it doesn’t, budget for a licence or a machine — and don’t wait for the deadline to make that call under pressure.
4. Get your Publisher files out. Convert anything you need to keep to PDF or Word while you still have a working copy. This is the only item on the list with no purchasable fix.
5. Audit the server estate. Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 are on their final ESU year. SharePoint and Project Server 2016 and 2019 are already unsupported as of July.
6. Choose your Office replacement. Professional Plus 2024 if you need Access; Home & Business 2024 if you don’t. Both are perpetual and both run to October 2029.
7. Install before the deadline, not after. Perpetual Office and Microsoft 365 cannot sit side by side cleanly, and activation conflicts are far easier to resolve when you’re not also running unpatched software.

What end of support does and doesn’t mean

Microsoft is careful with its wording here, and the carefulness is doing some work. Your software does not stop functioning on 14 October. Nothing deactivates, nothing phones home to switch itself off, no files become unreadable. That is all technically true.

What ends is the repair service. Every vulnerability found after that date stays open permanently — not delayed, not backported to a critical-only channel, just never fixed. Office 2019 went end of support in October 2025 and researchers were documenting campaigns against its unpatched surface within weeks. Office 2021 will be treated the same way, and attackers know these dates as well as IT departments do.

For a business handling personal data, there’s a further dimension. Running software past vendor end-of-life is a documented risk that has to be justified. “We hadn’t got round to it” is not a position that survives an ICO investigation following a breach.

Frequently asked questions

Lifecycle dates are taken from Microsoft’s official product lifecycle documentation as at August 2026 and are subject to change. Microsoft 365 pricing quoted reflects UK list prices following the 1 July 2026 increase. Verify current dates and pricing with Microsoft before making purchasing decisions.