Kubernetes 1.34 reaches end of life upstream on October 27, 2026. After that date the project stops publishing 1.34 patch releases, leaving 1.35, 1.36 and 1.37 as the supported minor versions. Managed services run their own clocks, so the deadline that matters for a production cluster depends on where it runs.

The Kubernetes patch release page lists 1.34.12, released on September 15, as the latest patch. The branch entered maintenance mode on August 27, 2026, which limits any further release to fixes for CVEs, dependency problems and critical core issues. The other supported branches reach end of life on February 28, 2027 (1.35), June 28, 2027 (1.36) and October 28, 2027 (1.37).

Managed Kubernetes dates for 1.34

Amazon EKS. Standard support for 1.34 runs until December 2, 2026, and extended support until December 2, 2027, according to the EKS release calendar. Extended support is enabled by default and raises the price from $0.10 to $0.60 per cluster per hour, billed from the start of the end-of-standard-support day in UTC. When extended support ends, EKS upgrades the control plane automatically, while managed and self-managed node groups stay on the old version. Clusters that have extended support disabled are upgraded automatically at the end of standard support instead.

Google Kubernetes Engine. The GKE release schedule lists January 25, 2027 as the end of standard support for 1.34 and November 25, 2027 as the end of extended support. Extended support is available only to clusters in the Extended release channel and costs an extra $0.50 per cluster per hour on top of the $0.10 management fee. Clusters in the Rapid, Regular and Stable channels follow GKE's automatic upgrade schedule: in the Stable channel, automatic upgrades from 1.34 to 1.35 were scheduled to begin on or after September 15, 2026, and maintenance exclusions can hold a cluster back only until the end of standard support. Google describes the schedule's dates as best-effort estimates.

Azure Kubernetes Service. AKS lists November 2026 as the end of community support for 1.34, and Microsoft counts a month-only date as the last day of that month. After that, 1.34 moves to platform support, which covers only Azure platform issues, until 1.38 is generally available. Long-term support for 1.34 runs to November 2027, per the AKS version policy, but it requires the Premium tier and an explicit opt-in.

What can break on the way to 1.35

The Kubernetes 1.35 release announcement flags three changes worth checking before the upgrade:

  • cgroup v1 support is removed. On nodes whose Linux distribution does not support cgroup v2, the kubelet will fail to start.
  • The ipvs mode in kube-proxy is deprecated. It still works in 1.35 but logs a warning at startup; nftables is the recommended replacement on Linux.
  • 1.35 is the last release that supports containerd 1.x. Nodes need containerd 2.0 or later before moving on to 1.36, and the kubelet_cri_losing_support metric shows which ones are affected.

Clusters that still run the retired community ingress-nginx controller have one more constraint: its final release, v1.15.1, was tested only against Kubernetes 1.31 through 1.35.

Upgrade rules to keep in mind

Control planes move one minor version at a time, so a 1.34 cluster reaches 1.37 through 1.35 and 1.36. Under the Kubernetes version skew policy, nodes can run up to three minor versions behind the control plane, which means 1.34 nodes keep working under a 1.37 control plane. Amazon's documentation adds that staying three versions behind is not recommended, and on AKS a supported cluster without long-term support cannot skip minor versions.

The project's next monthly patch release for supported branches is targeted for October 13, 2026. Cluster platform news is collected in our DevOps platforms section, and managed service changes in cloud.

Frequently asked questions

When does Kubernetes 1.34 reach end of life?

Upstream support ends on October 27, 2026. The last scheduled patch was 1.34.12, released on September 15, 2026, and the project publishes no 1.34 patches after the end-of-life date.

When does EKS end standard support for Kubernetes 1.34?

On December 2, 2026. Extended support, billed at $0.60 per cluster per hour instead of $0.10, runs until December 2, 2027.

When does GKE end support for 1.34?

The GKE release schedule lists January 25, 2027 for the end of standard support and November 25, 2027 for the end of extended support, which is available only in the Extended release channel.

When does AKS end support for 1.34?

Community support ends in November 2026, meaning the last day of that month. Clusters on the Premium tier with long-term support enabled are covered until November 2027.

Which Kubernetes versions are supported after October 27, 2026?

Upstream, 1.35, 1.36 and 1.37, which reach end of life on February 28, 2027, June 28, 2027 and October 28, 2027 respectively.