[Interest] Windows 10's EOL in Qt

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 2:22 AM Oliver Wolff via Interest <
interest at qt-project.org> wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> You might have heard that Windows 10 has officially reached its end of
> life on 14.10.2025.
>
> Due to the operating system's popularity Windows 10 is currently covered
> in Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.
>
> For consumers this means that the operating system will receive security
> fixes until 13.10.2026, see for some information
> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates.
>
> For commercial users the program will run for three years (until
> 10.10.2028) and comes with increasing costs per device per year, see
>
> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates
> .
>
> Considering these time lines I think it is time to think about Windows
> 10 end of life in Qt. My suggestion would be to have 6.12 LTS as Qt's
> last release that will include support for Windows 10. This should give
> consumers a chance to use this version during their ESU period and the
> LTS nature of this release will give commercial users enough time to
> prepare for an operating system and Qt version change. With 6.12 LTS
> phase (until 2023) we even go beyond Microsoft's promises for this
> operating system.
>
> Having said that I think we cannot drop support before 6.12. Users and
> customers rely on Qt being available on that (still popular) operating
> system.
>
> To make users and developers aware of the looming removal of support I
> would add a to our supported platforms page
> (https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtdoc/+/713611).
>
> Any feedback on the topic is welcome. Do not hesitate to shout.


Windows 10 still has a 36% share of desktop markets.  Despite what
Microsoft declares by fiat.  Confer, <
https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share>.  Windows 10
support is definitely not ready to be deprecated in Qt.

Personally, I feel one should not consider dropping support until market
share falls below 3% or 5%.  I realize others do not share the sentiment.

Jeff
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