IBM will now provide support for applications running on Liberty with Java SE 8 until December 2030.
The final Java 8 release of Liberty has been changed to 28.0.0.12, with iFixes provided until December 2030. (Previously, the final Java 8 release of Liberty was 26.0.0.9, with iFixes provided until September 2028.)
This change in support lifecycle dates gives customers an additional 2 years and 3 months of full IBM Support for Java 8 applications running on Liberty. It includes all active editions of Liberty where customers have paid for entitlement to IBM Support. This change was announced on 5th October 2025 at IBM TechXchange.
Why has IBM changed the final Java 8 release for Liberty?
There were 2 key reasons for the changing Java 8 lifecycle for Liberty.
- Customers who are running Java 8 applications on Liberty need more time to upgrade to more recent versions of Java.
- Customers who a running Java 8 applications on WebSphere Application Server but want to modernize them to run on Liberty need more time to complete that modernization.
As part of this update the Java 8 lifecycle dates for IBM Semeru Runtimes have also been changed to December 2030, aligning with IBM SDK, Java Technology Edition, Version 8.
Removal Notices explained
29.0.0.1 will be the first release of Liberty to not support Java SE 8, as noted in the Liberty Removal Notices.
Liberty uses a Removal Notice mechanism to announce when a Java SE version will be removed from support. Java SE 8 will not be included in the 29.0.0.1 release of Liberty as it will have been removed, hence the removal notice. According to the Liberty Single-Stream Continuous Delivery (SSCD) lifecycle policy, the final release of Liberty to support Java SE 8 will be 28.0.0.12, with iFixes for two years. This means that Java 8 will be supported on 28.0.0.12 until December 2030.
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