Canonical Boosts Ubuntu Long-Term Support Longevity with Five-Year Ubuntu Pro Legacy Expansion

Canonical has announced a lifeline for those with projects running end-of-life release of its popular Linux distribution: the extension of Ubuntu Pro Legacy, its extended maintenance offering, to 15 years of support.

"In highly regulated or hardware-dependent industries, upgrades threaten to disrupt tightly controlled security and compliance. For many organizations, maintaining production systems for more than a decade is complex, but remains a more sensible option than a full upgrade," explains Canonical's Lidia Luna Puerta. "That's why, in 2024, we first introduced the Legacy add-on for Ubuntu Pro, starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr).

"The Legacy add-on increased the total maintenance window for Ubuntu LTS releases to 12 years: five years of standard security maintenance, five years of Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM), and two years of additional coverage with the Legacy add-on. Due to the positive reception and growing interest in longer lifecycle coverage, we're excited to now extend the Legacy add-on to five years, bringing a 15-year security maintenance and support window to Ubuntu LTS releases."

Canonical releases Long Term Support (LTS) versions of its Debian-derived Ubuntu Linux distribution every two years, in April — making them recognizable through an even version number ending in .04, as with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Unlike the non-LTS releases, these come with the promise of updates for a full five years before reaching end-of-life. After five years, users can upgrade — or they can sign up to Ubuntu Pro, a free-for-five-personal-machines (expandable to 50 machines for active Ubuntu Community members) but otherwise-paid subscription that unlocks an additional five years of security updates.

For those who still haven't upgraded after 10 years, there's the "Legacy" add-on — a premium upgrade that added another two years on to the support clock, and which has now been expanded to a full five years. As a result, 2014's Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which reached end-of-life in 2019, end of Ubuntu Pro extended maintenance in 2024, and was scheduled to drop out of Ubuntu Pro Legacy support in April 2026, will now be supported through to April 2029. Later releases — 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22,04, and the most recent 24.04 — will also see their lifecycles extended accordingly, as will all LTS releases from next year's 26.04 onward.

"Throughout this 15-year window, Ubuntu Pro provides continuous security maintenance across the entire Ubuntu base, kernel, and key open source components," Puerta adds. Canonical's security team actively scans, triages, and backports critical, high, and select medium CVEs to all maintained LTS releases, ensuring security without forcing disruptive major upgrades that break compatibility or require re-certification. Break/fix support remains an optional add-on. When production issues arise, you can get access to our Support team through this service and troubleshoot with experts who contribute to Ubuntu every day, who’ve seen similar problems before and know how to resolve them quickly."

More information is available on the Ubuntu Pro page; pricing is set at a 50% premium over standard Ubuntu Pro, which starts at $25 per year per workstation or $500 per year per server.