Debian releases & LTS versions

About every two years, the Debian Project releases a new version of Debian. These bring additional features, stability improvements and enhanced security compared with earlier releases. The official ‘stable’ Debian releases are intended for production systems and receive updates for three years. Debian LTS (Long Term Support) extends support for Debian releases by two years.

What is Debian LTS?

Debian LTS is a project run by a group of volunteers and companies. When the Debian team ends official support for a release after three years, LTS takes over for a further two years. This support focuses on long-term use and covers only critical and widely used packages.

Benefits of Debian LTS

Thanks to Debian LTS, you can keep using systems that underpin an environment’s stability and security for longer. With LTS you can skip new releases without compromising stability or security. Because you don’t necessarily need to upgrade Debian every three years, you also save time and costs.

Upgrade to the latest Debian release

Regular updates are essential for the security, stability, performance and functionality of a Debian system. They help prevent security issues, improve system reliability and ensure your systems can benefit from the latest developments. A solid update policy is the cornerstone of a secure and stable environment. How to upgrade a Debian release without reinstalling is explained in our guide ‘Upgrading a Debian release’.

The Debian Project works with three branches: ‘stable’, ‘testing’ and ‘unstable’. The ‘unstable’ branch of Debian (also known as Sid) contains packages that are under active development, so stability cannot be guaranteed. Once packages have been tested sufficiently, they move to Debian’s ‘testing’ branch, which is much more stable. 

Before Debian moves to a new release, the ‘testing’ branch is frozen. This allows stability to be verified without new updates coming in. When the branch is stable enough, the frozen ‘testing’ branch becomes the new ‘stable’ branch. The old ‘stable’ branch becomes ‘oldstable’, and the previous ‘oldstable’ becomes ‘oldoldstable’. 

Which Debian releases, versions and LTS are currently available? 

The most recent Debian release is Debian 13 (Trixie). It launched on 19 August 2025 and is supported until August 2028. After an official release there are always several ‘point releases’ with interim updates to all key functionality.

Although Debian 14 (Forky) is already on the roadmap, older Debian versions don’t become obsolete overnight. When official Debian support ends, the Debian LTS team takes over for two years. From July 2024 Debian 11 (Bullseye) receives LTS until June 2026. For Debian 12 (Bookworm), the LTS period ends in June 2028.

What to do when Debian reaches End of Life

A Debian version reaches End of Life (EOL) when official support expires. Debian’s Security Team steps back and no longer delivers stability and security updates. If, for any reason, you do not wish to upgrade to the next Debian release, you may be able to use Debian LTS. 

In essence, moving to Debian LTS is little more than enabling a new repository. This supplies your systems with updates and upgrades for the packages maintained by the LTS project. Of course, it’s vital to verify that all packages on your systems are covered by LTS support. 

If certain packages aren’t covered, you’ll need to take other measures for them: shut them down, switch to a supported package, or maintain their updates and upgrades yourself. Or better still: upgrade to the new release.

Another important point is that Debian LTS does not support all architectures. Less common processors in particular fall outside Debian LTS. If you’re on 64-bit Intel or AMD, this isn’t an issue. 32-bit i386 is also covered by LTS. If you still have very old systems with architectures such as SPARC, MIPS or ppc, LTS support has (for some time) no longer been available.

At the end of LTS support there is also the option of paid Extra Long Term Support (ELTS), offered by the company Freexian. ELTS brings Debian’s total support period to 10 years. 

Want to check your Debian version? Here’s how

Check the Debian version on your server via a terminal using one of the following commands:

cat /etc/os-release | sed -n 's/^PRETTY_NAME=//p'
cat /etc/debian_version
lsb_release -a

In all cases you’ll see the version number; the first and last commands also show the Debian release codename.

Released Debian versions

The first version of Debian (0.1) appeared on 16 August 1993. The first stable release followed in 1996. Due to a vendor’s mistake (entering the wrong version number), that wasn’t version 1.0 but became Debian 1.1 (Buzz). These are all official Debian releases to date (and for the near future).