PHP 8.2 reaches End of Life on 31 December 2026: how many days are left and what to do

Today, Monday 5 October 2026, there are 87 days left until 31 December 2026. From that date, PHP 8.2 will no longer receive any patches, not even for critical vulnerabilities. Anyone running production servers on this version has less than three months to plan the upgrade — not to improvise it.

The date and the countdown

Every PHP release branch is fully supported for two years from its initial stable release, after which it enters a security-fixes-only phase. For PHP 8.2, this phase ends on 31 December 2026, as reported in the official register of supported versions on php.net and confirmed by php.watch, which lists PHP 8.2 as "Security-Fixes Only" with an End-of-Life date scheduled for 2026-12-31.

From 5 October to 31 December 2026 there are exactly 87 days: 26 remaining days in October, 30 in November, 31 in December. After that date, after 31 December 2026, no further security patches will be released by the PHP project for this version.

Supported versions after 31 December 2026

The official register at php.net/supported-versions.php shows the following dates for active branches:

Branch	Initial release	End of active support	End of security support (EOL)
8.2	8 December 2022	31 December 2024	31 December 2026
8.3	23 November 2023	31 December 2025	31 December 2027
8.4	21 November 2024	31 December 2026	31 December 2028
8.5	20 November 2025	31 December 2027	31 December 2029

Every PHP release branch is fully supported for two years from its initial stable release, during which reported bugs and security issues are fixed and released in regular point releases. For those deciding on a migration target: PHP 8.4 is still under active support until 31 December 2026 and under security support until 2028; PHP 8.5 is the most recent branch, with active support until the end of 2027. PHP 8.3 has already been in security-only mode since 31 December 2025, so it's a minimal jump but not a long-term target.

The precedent: PHP 8.1 and what happened after 31 December 2025

PHP 8.1 is the closest case study in time. PHP 8.1 reached its End-of-Life on 31 December 2025. Four months later, according to monitoring cited by 365i and updated on 22 April 2026, WP Cloud, Pagely and WordPress VIP had forced migration on remaining customers, but roughly 55% of the first million PHP sites surveyed were still running an EOL version. The same report notes that the forced migrations carried out by managed hosts in the first weeks of January led to reports of broken functions, broken admin panels, and WooCommerce stores crashing for two weeks after the switch.

The takeaway for anyone running their own servers: last-minute forced migration, carried out by a third party on your environment, breaks things. Doing it calmly, with your own testing, costs less.

Minimum checklist before 31 December 2026

• Check the PHP version in production with php -v on every host/container.
• Verify the compatibility of plugins, CMS and frameworks with PHP 8.3/8.4/8.5 before switching the interpreter in production.
• Consult the official migration guides linked from the php.net/supported-versions.php page, one for each target branch (8.3, 8.4, 8.5).
• Schedule staging tests with the new PHP version before the Christmas change-freeze window, which for many teams reduces the usable days in December to zero.
• Don't wait for your hosting provider to force the upgrade: the PHP 8.1 precedent shows disruptions occur when migration is imposed without sufficient notice.

Anyone running control panels or billing systems should separately check the PHP requirements stated by their software vendor, as some panels impose a maximum supported version regardless of the php.net schedule.