Kong is proud to announce our first-ever Long Term Support (LTS) version of Kong Enterprise. Kong Enterprise 2.8 LTS will be supported up to March 25, 2025.

LTS is an industry term for a software release that is supported for a longer period of time than other releases. LTS versions are popular because once users are on an LTS version, they can rest assured that this version will continue to receive technical support and security updates during the LTS period. Often, this gives them the required time before updating to a newer version of the software.

As Kong’s enterprise segment has grown, we recognize that many of our customers may hesitate to upgrade their Kong Enterprise environment. For customers in certain heavily regulated industries or with a complex Kong Enteprise deployment, upgrading to a new Kong Enterprise version may involve substantial effort that requires careful planning. Kong is committed to supporting the needs of these customers with an LTS version of Kong Enterprise.

How Kong Version Support Works

Kong Support comes in several flavors. These include supported, sunset, and LTS versions of our software.

Kong publishes its support for different versions of Kong Enterprise here. In general, Kong follows semantic versioning.

Kong typically ships a minor version of the latest Kong Enterprise major release every quarter, along with patch releases for all supported versions at roughly the same cadence, but on offset schedules from the latest version of Kong Enterprise. New features are only released to the latest version (whether major or minor) of Kong Enterprise.

A "supported version" of Kong Enterprise means:

• Kong’s technical support team will assist customers running a supported version
• Kong’s technical support team will assist customers in upgrading to a newer version
  • This includes Kong Enterprise configuration support and performance guidance
• Critical security vulnerabilities and bugfixes can be backported pursuant to the guidelines

If you’re currently running Kong Enterprise 2.x, you can look here for guidance on the full support timelines.

After any version of Kong Enterprise reaches its full support duration, it will enter the "sunset support" phase. Sunset support exists to help customers upgrade to newer versions of Kong Enterprise. In the sunset phase, patches of any kind aren’t applied to these versions of Kong Enterprise, but we’ll be on hand to help customers navigate the upgrade path.

Kong Minor Version Support

In addition to announcing the LTS version of Kong Enterprise, Kong is also simplifying its support for non-LTS minor versions. For the 3.x Kong Enterprise series, all minor versions will receive technical support for 12 months from release.

Kong’s LTS Support

Starting now, any customer running Kong Enterprise version 2.8.x.x will receive technical support until March 25, 2025 or the end of the lifecycle of the given platform distribution,* whichever comes sooner. After the LTS support period, the version will enter "sunset support" for an additional 12 months under our sunset support policy.

In the future, at Kong’s discretion, we’ll designate one or more minor versions of the 3.x series as LTS version. These LTS versions will similarly receive up to three years of technical support, instead of the standard 12 months — same as the 2.8 LTS version.

In addition, Kong will support direct migration between two adjacent LTS versions. In the 3.x series, we’ll also announce an LTS version and will support direct migration from 2.8.x.x LTS to 3.x.x.x. LTS.

* Note: any platform that is set to end of life (EOL) prior to March 25, 2025, will not qualify for Kong LTS support past the applicable platforms’ EOL date. Both RHEL-7 and Debian 10 will EOL prior to March 2, 2025. Kong will support RHEL-7 and Debian 10 until their respective EOL dates, but not after.

Where to find more information

For detailed information, please read our Support Policy.