PostgreSQL 14 Reaches End of Life in November 2026

The PostgreSQL project follows a strict 5-year support policy for each major version. PostgreSQL 14, released in October 2021, will reach its end of life on November 12, 2026.

After that date, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group will no longer release security patches, bug fixes, or minor updates for version 14. Running an unsupported version in production exposes systems to unpatched CVEs with no remediation path from the upstream project.

What end of life means in practice

• No more security advisories or CVE patches for PG 14
• No minor releases (the current 14.17 will be the final release)
• Community support on mailing lists continues informally, but without any commitment
• Third-party distributions and cloud providers typically drop support 3–6 months after EOL

Upgrade options

To PostgreSQL 17 (recommended) PostgreSQL 17 is the current stable release with the longest remaining support window (until 2029). Upgrading from 14 to 17 requires pg_upgrade or a logical dump/restore, as direct in-place upgrades skip major versions.

To PostgreSQL 16 or 15 If an immediate jump to 17 is not feasible, upgrading to 15 or 16 extends your support window by one or two years respectively, while reducing the scope of application compatibility testing.

Key things to check before upgrading

• Extension compatibility — verify all extensions are available for the target version
• Deprecated features — pg_dump --schema-only can surface usage of deprecated syntax
• search_path behaviour changed in PG 15 (trusted extensions no longer implicitly added)
• COPY FROM error handling changed in PG 14 → 17 (log_error_verbosity defaults differ)

Planning timeline

Now	Inventory all PG 14 instances
Q2 2026	Test upgrade on staging
Q3 2026	Upgrade production
Before Nov 12, 2026	Complete, with rollback plan closed

Start early — pg_upgrade from 14 to 17 is straightforward but large databases require maintenance windows for the initial upgrade and post-upgrade ANALYZE.