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Kubernetes · Azure Kubernetes Service · Checked

AKS 1.34 end of life date (EOL) and LTS

AKS ends support for Kubernetes 1.34 (end of life) in Nov 2026. Long-term support (LTS) runs until Nov 2027. AKS long-term support needs the Premium tier. Microsoft says a month with no day means the last day of that month.

AKS 1.34

Days counted on

Ending soon Next: End of life, Nov 2026. A month gets no day count.

End of life: Nov 2026, no day count

AKS GA
Nov 2025
End of life
Nov 2026
LTS end of life
Nov 2027

What happens at the end

Our guide has the steps: AKS Kubernetes 1.34 end of life: November 2026.

What Microsoft says, as printed on its pages:

Grace period and forced upgrade
60-day platform support grace period after the published end-of-life date; starting June 1, 2027, AKS automatically upgrades clusters still on an unsupported version when it ends, ignoring maintenance windows and deprecated-API checks Source
Month-only end-of-life dates
Unless an explicit date is provided, the End of Life (EOL) date is the last day of the specified month, e.g. 'Mar 2026' means March 31, 2026 Source
LTS requirements
Enabling LTS requires moving the cluster to the Premium tier and explicitly selecting the LTS support plan; LTS supports only the two most recent patch versions Source
Planned platform-initiated upgrade month (community support)
1.32-1.35: Jun 2027; 1.36: Sep 2027; 1.37: Jan 2028; 1.38: TBD (planning estimates) Source
Planned platform-initiated upgrade month (LTS)
1.29-1.32: Jun 2027; 1.33: Oct 2027; 1.34: Feb 2028; 1.35: Jun 2028; 1.36: Sep 2028; 1.37: Jan 2029; 1.38: TBD (planning estimates) Source

Upgrade to

AKS 1.35 is the next newer version in standard support. Its end of life is in Mar 2027.

Check your version

Run this command with the Azure CLI. It lists each cluster with its Kubernetes version.

Azure CLI
az aks list --query "[].{name:name, version:kubernetesVersion}" -o table

Same version elsewhere

Questions

When is the AKS 1.34 end of life date?
AKS ends support for Kubernetes 1.34 (end of life) in Nov 2026. Long-term support (LTS) runs until Nov 2027. AKS long-term support needs the Premium tier. Microsoft says a month with no day means the last day of that month.
How do I check my Kubernetes version on AKS?
Run this command with the Azure CLI. It lists each cluster with its Kubernetes version. az aks list --query "[].{name:name, version:kubernetesVersion}" -o table
What should I upgrade AKS 1.34 to?
AKS 1.35 is the next newer version in standard support. Its end of life is in Mar 2027.

Sources

How we checked
  1. Each table comes from the vendor's own page. We copy the dates as the vendor prints them.
  2. Some dates are only a month or a part of a year. We show that text as it is. We never turn it into a day, and we do not count days to it.
  3. Ending soon means the next key date is in the next 90 days. We count days from today.
  4. What to do opens our page about that change, when we have one.
  5. If a vendor moves a date, we fix the table after we check the vendor page.

What the dates mean, in short, from Microsoft's pages: AKS supports a GA minor version for 12 months; after its end-of-life date you get a 60-day platform support grace period, and from June 1, 2027 AKS automatically upgrades clusters still on an unsupported version once that grace period ends. Long-term support adds another year but is never automatic: it must be enabled explicitly and requires moving the cluster to the Premium tier (s2), whose rates Microsoft does not print on these pages.