[Interest] Windows 10's EOL in Qt

[Oliver Wolff]

Hey,

The decision has not only been made based on the fact that Microsoft 
dropped support for Windows 10. There are real benefits for Qt 
developers in dropping support for the OS.

We do not plan to break things deliberately right away but I think 
without regular testing it will only be a question of time before Qt 
will not longer build or run on Windows 10.

Newer Windows functionality often is only available on newer versions of 
Windows. One recent example is qioring_win but also parts of our 
networkinformation backend are not available on Windows 10. With the 
limited availability across Windows versions we have to add features in 
cmake and do compile and runtime checks to the code base. Situations 
like these will happen much less often with the dropped support.

But having Windows 10 support does not only mean added work inside the 
code base. We have to test proper functionality of the port regularly. 
Be that inside of our CI system or in release test automation or manual 
tests. If there are no more security updates for the operating system a 
potential security risk is being created where the probability of a 
breach grows over time.

On the other hand the inclusion of Windows 10 support still offers some 
support during the transition period. For open source users Qt 6.12 will 
be supported until 6.13 is released which should happen around March 
2027. For commercial customers it will be supported untile 2031. Both of 
these support schedules go beyond what Microsoft offers with their ESU 
offerings for the respective groups. So there is still time to move 
forward and we support the users during this endeavour.

Commercial customers always have the option to talk to their sales 
representatives. They are always open for constructive feedback and will 
make sure that information is distributed inside the Qt company.

I hope this clarifies some of the open points.

Cheers,
Olli

On 20/02/2026 16:51, Alexander Dyagilev wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I think you should never drop any OS support on just the fact that it 
> reached its EOL.
> 
> Its real popularity is what only matters.
> 
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 2:39 PM Oliver Wolff via Interest <interest at qt- 
> project.org <mailto:interest at qt-project.org>> wrote:
> 
>     On 19/02/2026 08:20, Oliver Wolff via Interest wrote:
>      > With 6.12 LTS phase (until 2023) we even go beyond Microsoft's
>     promises
>      > for this operating system.
> 
>     This should of course have been 2030...
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