Windows 11 24H2 stops getting updates on October 13, 2026. On the Home and Pro editions.

Security updates for Windows 11 version 24H2 on the Home and Pro side of the family. Microsoft's own term for it is "end of updates (also known as end of servicing)", and the effect is the ordinary one: the monthly package that has been arriving on the second Tuesday of every month arrives for the last time, and then it stops.

October 13, 2026 is itself a Patch Tuesday. So the final set of fixes for this version lands on schedule, the machines take it, and everything looks normal. After it, no further regular monthly servicing is scheduled for that version. Microsoft has occasionally issued out-of-band fixes for out-of-support software, but that is an exception it decides case by case, not something to plan around.

The machines keep booting and the applications keep opening, so this is not a shutdown. What changes is the risk position. Vulnerabilities disclosed after that date will not be fixed on that version through the regular monthly channel, and whether any given one affects you depends on the vulnerability and your configuration. Some can be mitigated by other controls; the ones that cannot are the reason the date matters. For a bank, a credit union or a mortgage company, running an out-of-servicing version is the kind of thing that attracts scrutiny in patch management review, where institutions should be prepared to document remediation, risk acceptance, or compensating controls.

There are two underlying moves. Update the device to a newer feature version, or have the device running an edition that is still being serviced on the version it is on. You can do either, or both, which is why the section below lays out three supported configurations and the do-nothing outcome. Most fleets should look at the feature update first, because it carries no additional Windows licensing cost, and because of the part that surprises people: on the dates Microsoft publishes, updating to 25H2 and stepping up to Enterprise reach the same servicing date.

Because for General Availability Channel releases, Microsoft sets the end-of-updates date by edition, not by build. On the page where Microsoft lists supported versions of Windows client, the table has two separate end-of-updates columns. One covers Home, Pro, Pro Education and Pro for Workstations. The other covers Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise and Enterprise multi-session. Each General Availability Channel release appears once with a date in each column, and across the four releases below the Enterprise date runs roughly a year behind the Home and Pro date.

This is not a quirk of 24H2. It is how the whole channel works, which means the gap is already sitting in front of you on the next two versions as well.

Two caveats before you use this table as a checklist. It covers the General Availability Channel, which is what almost all business PCs run, and it is not the whole story for a device on the Long-Term Servicing Channel. Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC 2024 is also OS build 26100, the same build number as 24H2, and Microsoft services it until October 9, 2029. So build 26100 by itself carries four different end dates depending on what the device actually is: 24H2 on Home or Pro, 24H2 on Enterprise, Enterprise LTSC 2024, or IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024, the only LTSC 2024 edition with extended support, which Microsoft services until October 10, 2034. If you run LTSC anywhere, and institutions often do on ATMs, kiosks and teller hardware, those machines are on a separate track and none of the October dates on this page apply to them.

The second caveat is one exception to the column headings, on the last row only: Microsoft states that IoT Enterprise edition is not supported on Windows 11, version 26H1, so that March 13, 2029 date does not extend to IoT Enterprise the way the other rows do.

Read the 23H2 row before the 24H2 one. On the Home and Pro side that version is already out of updates, while the Enterprise side of the same build still has until November 10, 2026. If any part of your fleet is still on 23H2, the edition question is not a planning exercise for October. It is a question about today.

Two underlying moves give you three supported configurations, plus the outcome you get if nobody decides. Read the first two rows together, because that comparison is the thing most coverage of this deadline leaves out.

Look at the first two rows again. They reach the same servicing date. Updating a Pro device to 25H2 and licensing that same device up to Enterprise on 24H2 both take you to October 12, 2027, because that is what Microsoft's own table says. The same date is all they share. They differ in edition, in capabilities, in what you have to test, and in what can undo them later. One costs a per-user subscription; the other costs a feature-update cycle.

So licensing is a real route out, it is just not a version upgrade and not necessarily the lowest-cost one. Stepping a 24H2 device up to Enterprise genuinely extends that installation's servicing runway to October 12, 2027; it simply does not get you anywhere the feature update would not, and it costs a per-user subscription to arrive at the same date. Anyone presenting it as the only way past October 13 is leaving out the cheaper option. For most institutions the honest starting recommendation is the feature update, on cost. Enterprise licensing earns its place for different reasons: an application or a piece of hardware not yet validated on 25H2, a device you need to hold on a known build through an audit or a core conversion, or the Enterprise-only capabilities themselves. If you already hold the licenses, activating them adds no further licensing cost and is usually worth doing.

Where this gets genuinely hard is the devices that fit neither row cleanly. Shared branch workstations, teller stations, kiosks and machines that sit offline for weeks are the ones where a per-user subscription model and a feature-update window both need thought rather than a policy. Those are worth identifying before you choose, not after.

Through a Microsoft feature called subscription activation. In Microsoft's words, it "enables a step-up from Windows Pro edition to Enterprise edition", and it "can be used with a subscription to Windows Enterprise E3 or E5 licenses". It is not a rebuild. Microsoft describes it as eliminating "the need to manually deploy Enterprise or Education edition images on each target device", and says Windows Enterprise "can be deployed in an organization without keys and reboots".

The sequence is short, and it hangs entirely off identity rather than imaging.

Not from the outside, without device data. The date follows the version, edition and servicing channel each device is actually running, and Microsoft itself documents that the edition running is often not the edition an organization is entitled to.

This is worth quoting, because it is Microsoft describing the problem rather than a partner inventing it. Microsoft "recommends upgrading your Windows Pro devices to Enterprise edition when you have acquired a user subscription license for Windows", and then lists why that does not happen. The reasons include devices "not properly provisioned that don't automatically upgrade to Windows Enterprise edition", devices "acquired for a business process that was not under control of a central IT department", and devices brought in temporarily by vendors for a project and never stepped up.

Every one of those descriptions fits an ordinary financial institution. The branch machine bought on a departmental card. The laptop a core processor's implementation team left behind. The three workstations that came from a merger and were joined to the domain by somebody who has since left. None of them are failures of discipline. They are what a real fleet looks like after a few years.

Which is why the answer is an inventory, not an opinion: the installed edition and servicing channel reported by the devices you can reach, the Windows licenses actually held and assigned, and the gap between those two lists. A build number on its own does not settle it, because build 26100 belongs to 24H2 and to Enterprise LTSC 2024 alike, and those are years apart. Devices that are offline, unmanaged or outside central management have to be chased separately, and they are usually the ones carrying the surprise.