Erlang/OTP 25 end of life
Erlang/OTP 25 reached end of life on 17 May 2025 and no longer receives security patches from the Erlang/OTP team. Because each major release is supported for roughly three years, OTP 25 is now two majors behind the current supported line, which widens the jump for anyone still on it.
- End of life
- 17 May 2025
- Released
- May 2022
- Final release
- 25.3.2.21
- Successor
- OTP 27 or OTP 28
Date published by Erlang/OTP release policy, cross-checked against endoflife.date. We do not publish a lifecycle date we cannot source.
What actually stops on 17 May 2025
- Security patches for the OTP 25 branch and all of its bundled applications
- Any further 25.x releases
- Compatibility validation against current RabbitMQ releases
What actually breaks in the upgrade
Two majors behind is a wider jump than one
Moving from OTP 25 to a supported release crosses more than one set of changes, and the broker band that supports OTP 25 is correspondingly older. Estates in this position usually need a two-step plan rather than a single cutover.
Your options, costed honestly
Including the ones that do not involve buying anything from us.
| Option | What it is | Effort | Cost | Our view |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Move to a supported OTP release | Upgrade the runtime to OTP 27 or 28. | Coordinated with the broker | Engineering time | The right destination. The constraint is that each RabbitMQ release supports a narrow band of OTP versions, so the runtime rarely moves alone. |
| Stay and accept the exposure | Keep the current OTP release with no security updates. | None | None until an audit or an incident | Common and rarely deliberate. The version still reports fine and passes inventory checks, which is exactly why it persists. |
| OSSeva extended support | Patched builds on the OTP line you already run. | Drop-in package or image | Per cluster | Keeps the broker/runtime pair intact while the upgrade is planned properly rather than executed against an audit deadline. |
What OSSeva does for Erlang/OTP 25
OSSeva patches this line
OSSeva ships patched OTP 25 builds for estates that cannot move the runtime yet.
Erlang/OTP extended supportWhat your auditor will say
Requires that system components are protected from known vulnerabilities via security patches. A runtime with no upstream patch stream cannot satisfy this on its own, and the runtime is in scope even when the assessor only asked about the broker.
Vulnerability identification and remediation. Identification is satisfied by scanning; remediation is what fails when the fix does not exist for your release line.
Erlang/OTP 25: common questions
When did Erlang/OTP 25 reach end of life?
17 May 2025. It receives no further security patches from upstream.
How long does Erlang/OTP support a major release?
About three years — roughly two years after its successor ships. That puts OTP 24 at 10 May 2024, OTP 25 at 17 May 2025, OTP 26 at 26 May 2026 and OTP 27 at 20 May 2027.
Still running Erlang/OTP 25?
Tell us the versions and the estate size. We will tell you honestly whether to upgrade or to buy cover — and we say 'upgrade' more often than you would expect.