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@qt-
project.org <mailto:[email protected]>> 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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