If your website runs on Drupal 10, there is one date worth marking in your calendar: 9 December 2026. On that day the Drupal community ends support for version 10. Drupal 12 is released the same week.

That leaves under three months for the upgrade. Enough to do it calmly, too little to leave it until December.

What exactly ends on 9 December

After that date Drupal 10 will no longer receive:

  • security fixes - newly discovered vulnerabilities in core will not be patched,
  • bug fixes - if something breaks, nobody will officially fix it,
  • new releases - version 10 is frozen.

On top of that, module maintainers gradually drop the old version. The modules your site relies on will, over time, only be developed for Drupal 11 and 12.

"But the site still works"

Yes, nothing switches off on 10 December. The problem is less visible but more serious:

  • Vulnerabilities become public. When a security issue is found in Drupal, an advisory and a fix are published for supported versions. There will be no fix for Drupal 10, while the description of the flaw will be available to anyone - including bots that scan the web for unpatched installs.
  • Your host will eventually force changes. Hosting companies retire old PHP versions. Drupal 11 needs PHP 8.3 or newer, and an old install may stop working with an upgraded server.
  • Responsibility for data. If your site collects forms, orders or user accounts, running software without security fixes will be hard to defend after a breach.

An outdated Drupal does not break with a bang. It just becomes an easier target every month.

Heads-up: you may already be without patches

Support does not cover "Drupal 10" as a whole, only its latest branch. If your site has not been updated in a while and runs an older 10.x release, security fixes may have stopped reaching it already. December is the final cut-off, but not always the first one.

How to check: log in to the admin panel and open Reports → Status report (/admin/reports/status). It shows your exact Drupal version and whether security updates are available.

Your options

1. Upgrade to Drupal 11 (usually the best choice)

Going from 10 to 11 is not a migration like leaving Drupal 7, where the site had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. It is an upgrade within the same architecture. You still need to:

  • upgrade PHP on the server to 8.3 or newer,
  • check that every module has a Drupal 11 compatible release,
  • fix custom code and the theme if they use APIs removed in the new version.

In many cases this is a few days of work. With lots of custom modules it can take a few weeks.

2. Straight to Drupal 12?

Drupal 12 ships the same week Drupal 10 support ends. You cannot jump from 10 directly to 12 - the path always goes through 11. The sensible move is to upgrade to 11 first, stabilise the site, and plan the step to 12 once modules catch up.

3. Paid extended support

Some companies sell commercial patches for versions past their official end of life. This can buy time if the upgrade is genuinely complex, but it is a stopgap. You pay to postpone the problem, not to solve it.

4. Switching technology

If your site is a handful of pages and a contact form, the upgrade may be a good moment to ask whether you still need Drupal. For portals, sites with many editors and complex content structures, Drupal usually remains the best choice.

Your plan for the coming weeks

  1. Check your version of Drupal and PHP in the status report.
  2. Review your modules. The Upgrade Status module shows which modules and code are not ready for Drupal 11.
  3. Ask your host about PHP 8.3 or newer and the database requirements.
  4. Prepare a backup and a test environment. Upgrades are always done on a copy first, never on the live site.
  5. Upgrade and test forms, search, login and everything that brings in customers.
  6. Set up ongoing maintenance. After the upgrade your site still needs regular security updates. Without them you will be back in the same spot in two years.

Do not leave it until December

In December many companies will realise at the last minute, and developers' calendars will be full. Start now and you have time for a calm audit, testing and fixes without deadline pressure.

We work with Drupal every day: we upgrade sites to Drupal 11, take over maintenance from previous developers and handle security updates on a fixed monthly plan. See how our Drupal support and maintenance works, or start with a free audit - we will tell you how much work your site needs.