Node.js 26 LTS: Release Date, End-of-Life Date, and What's New

Node.js 26 "Lithium" officially became Active LTS on October 28, 2026, with the release of version 26.13.0. That makes Node.js 26 the newest line production teams can standardize on, with security and bug fixes guaranteed through April 30, 2029. The promotion also closes out an era: Node.js 26 is the last release built under the project's old two-majors-per-year model, since Node.js 27 and every line after it will move to a single yearly release that goes straight to LTS.

What happened: Node.js 26 is now Active LTS

Node.js 26.13.0, released October 28, 2026 and announced by release manager Richard Lau on the official Node.js blog, carries no functional changes from the prior 26.12.1 build. The only differences are metadata updates — including the process.release object — that flip Node.js 26's status from "Current" to "Active LTS." Node.js 26 first shipped as the Current release back on May 5, 2026, and spent the following months in that channel before this scheduled promotion.

One practical note from the release notes: since Node.js 25, official Linux binaries are linked against libatomic. Teams upgrading straight from Node.js 22 or 24 (or anything older) may need to install libatomic separately depending on their Linux distribution.

Node.js 26 release date and LTS timeline

Here is the full lifecycle for Node.js 26, cross-referenced against the official Node.js release schedule, alongside the two LTS lines it overlaps with:

Node.js 24 "Krypton" moved from Active LTS into Maintenance LTS on October 20, 2026, just a week before Node.js 26 took over as the newest Active LTS line. That means two LTS releases — 24 and 26 — are both still fully supported right now, which is the normal overlap window the Node.js project designs for migrations.

What's actually new in the 26.13.0 release

Because 26.13.0 is purely an LTS-promotion release, there is no new runtime behavior to test for. Teams already running 26.12.1 in production do not need to change anything beyond updating their version pin. The release retains the same V8 engine build, npm version, and API surface as the prior Current build; only the internal release metadata changed to reflect the new support tier.

That said, the promotion is a good trigger to review two things: dependency lockfiles (teams running Node.js in CI may want to revisit how they pin runtime versions — see our coverage of GitHub Actions workflow lockfiles going GA for a related CI-hardening move) and native-module compatibility, since any addon built against Node.js 25 or an early 26.x Current build should be re-verified against the LTS ABI before it's treated as production-ready.

Node.js 26 end-of-life date: how long it's supported

Node.js 26 will receive active LTS updates — new features that are backward compatible, bug fixes, and security patches — until October 20, 2027. After that it enters Maintenance LTS, where it only receives critical bug fixes and security patches, through its final end-of-life date of April 30, 2029. That's roughly 30 months of support from this LTS promotion, in line with every LTS line since Node.js 12.

For context, Node.js 24 "Krypton" is already in Maintenance LTS and is scheduled to reach end-of-life on April 30, 2028 — a year before Node.js 26. Node.js 25, the odd-numbered Current release that shipped alongside Node.js 26's development cycle, never received LTS status at all and is already past its end-of-life date, consistent with the old model where odd lines were short-lived testing channels only.

Why Node.js is ending the odd/even release model

Node.js 26 is the last release line to go through the project's long-standing cadence: a new major every April and October, with even-numbered lines (like 26) promoted to LTS and odd-numbered lines (like 25) staying Current-only before retiring. Starting with Node.js 27, the project is moving to one major release per year, branched from main each October, according to the official announcement "Evolving the Node.js Release Schedule" published on the Node.js blog.

Under the new model, every release line gets six months in a new Alpha channel, six months as Current, and then goes straight into 30 months of Active LTS — with no Maintenance LTS phase at all, since the announcement states those lines "stay in 'Active LTS' for the whole 30 months of Long Term Support and do not go through the 'Maintenance' phase." That adds up to 36 months from a line's first Current release to its end-of-life date.

The Node.js release working group gave three reasons for the change: odd-numbered releases saw minimal real-world adoption since most users wait for LTS anyway; the odd/even split confused newcomers to the runtime; and maintaining security backports across four or five simultaneously active release lines had become an unsustainable load on the volunteer release team, especially as lines like Node.js 22 and 26 diverge further from each other over time.

What this means for Node.js 27 and the new Alpha channel

Node.js 27 entered Alpha on October 28, 2026 — the same day Node.js 26 was promoted to LTS — with the first alpha build, 27.0.0-alpha.0.0.0, announced by Rafael Gonzaga. Under the new schedule, Node.js 27 will move to Current around April 2027, reach LTS status in October 2027, and run through to an end-of-life date of April 30, 2030.

The Alpha channel replaces the early-testing role that odd-numbered releases used to serve, but with one key difference: semver-major (breaking) changes are explicitly allowed during the six-month Alpha phase, something that was never permitted on the old odd-numbered Current lines. The official guidance for library authors is to start testing against Alpha builds in CI as early as possible, since waiting for LTS means bugs surface only after they've already reached end users. Teams that already standardize on LTS-only versions — the large majority, per the Node.js project's own adoption data — will see little practical change beyond the new version-numbering scheme, where major version numbers now track the calendar year of each line's first Current release (27.0.0 in 2027, 28.0.0 in 2028, and so on).

Upgrading to Node.js 26: a quick checklist

For teams planning the move off Node.js 24 Maintenance LTS, or straight from an EOL Node.js 25 install, a few steps are worth confirming before rolling 26.13.0 out to production:

On that last point, Node.js 26 LTS doesn't exempt a deployment from staying current on security patches between LTS promotions — a recent example being the Brotli decompression flaw that put Node.js and .NET runtimes under active attack and required an out-of-band patch regardless of LTS status.

How Node.js 26 LTS compares to Node.js 24 and Node.js 22

With Node.js 26 now Active LTS and Node.js 24 in Maintenance LTS, there are currently three LTS lines with some level of official support: Node.js 26 (Active LTS), Node.js 24 (Maintenance LTS), and Node.js 22 "Jod" (Maintenance LTS, entered that phase October 21, 2025). Node.js 22's own end-of-life date is April 30, 2027 — meaning it will quietly exit support about six months after Node.js 26 reaches its own Maintenance phase. Every major Node.js line since v18 has carried an element-themed codename: Hydrogen (18), Iron (20), Jod (22), Krypton (24), and now Lithium (26), with each new even-numbered release historically landing roughly two years after the one it succeeds as the "newest" Active LTS.

The practical guidance from the Node.js project hasn't changed with this announcement: new projects should target the newest Active LTS line (Node.js 26) for the longest support runway and the most current V8 engine, while teams mid-migration on Node.js 24 have until April 2028 before they must move off it entirely. Node.js 22 users should already be planning their next hop, since Jod's end-of-life clock keeps ticking independently of this week's promotion, and April 2027 is now less than six months after Node.js 27 itself reaches Current status.

None of this affects application-level JavaScript or TypeScript compatibility — 26.13.0 ships the same V8 build, npm version, and API surface as 26.12.1 — so the "upgrade" for most teams already running Node.js 26 Current is purely a version-pin and support-policy change, not a code change. Teams still on Node.js 22 or earlier face a more substantial jump and should budget time to re-run their full test suite, since two full major versions' worth of V8 and npm updates sit between Jod and Lithium.

Who actually needs to act on this right now

For most production teams, this LTS promotion changes very little in the short term — Node.js 26 Current users were already running the exact same binary, and the LTS label mainly affects how conservative platform teams and enterprise policy documents will treat the version going forward. Three groups should pay closer attention:

• Platform and DevOps teams that gate production deployments on "LTS only" policies can now move Node.js 26 off their watch-list and onto their approved-runtime list, and should update internal documentation that still lists Node.js 24 as "the current LTS."
• Library and framework maintainers should add Node.js 26 to their CI test matrices if they haven't already, and start tracking the new Node.js 27 Alpha builds, since breaking changes are now explicitly permitted during that six-month window in a way they never were for old odd-numbered Current releases.
• Teams still on Node.js 18 or 20, both of which are already end-of-life, should treat this announcement as a reminder that Node.js 22 "Jod" — their likely landing spot — has its own end-of-life date of April 30, 2027, giving them a narrowing window before a second migration becomes necessary.

What's next

With Node.js 26 now locked in as Active LTS through October 2027 and Maintenance LTS after that until April 2029, the next milestone to watch is Node.js 27's move from Alpha to Current around April 2027 — the first release built entirely under the new one-major-per-year, straight-to-LTS model. The Node.js release working group has said the new schedule "is not final and may be amended," so library maintainers and large deployments should keep an eye on the authoritative schedule.json file in the nodejs/Release repository rather than relying on secondary summaries, including this one, for exact dates as 2027 approaches.

Written byFelix Moreau

Felix Moreau writes Pandromeda's software coverage and how-to guides. He covers Windows, macOS and Linux updates, the apps people rely on, emulators and developer tools, and turns official documentation into clear, numbered steps that work on the current version.

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