PostgreSQL 12 Reaches End of Life
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has announced that PostgreSQL 12 has reached end of life on November 14, 2024.
What end of life means
After the EOL date, PostgreSQL 12 will no longer receive:
- Security fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities
- Bug fixes for critical issues
- Minor version releases of any kind
Deployments running PostgreSQL 12 are exposed to unpatched CVEs and should be treated as a security risk in production environments.
Upgrade recommendations
The PostgreSQL project supports the five most recent major versions. As of November 2024, the supported versions are 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17.
For most installations, upgrading to PostgreSQL 17 is the recommended path. PostgreSQL 17 includes significant performance improvements in vacuum, bulk loading, and logical replication that make the upgrade worthwhile beyond the security benefit alone.
Upgrade options
- pg_upgrade — in-place binary upgrade, minimal downtime
- Logical replication — near-zero downtime for production systems
- pg_dump / pg_restore — simplest approach for smaller databases
Hardened deployments
If your organisation requires extended support beyond community EOL, Awide PostgreSQL DBMS provides long-term security maintenance for PostgreSQL 12 and earlier versions in regulated and mission-critical environments.
See postgresql.org/support/versioning for the full version support policy.