Supported Releases

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This page lists the status, timeline and policy for currently supported releases. Supported releases of Istio include releases that are in the active maintenance window and are patched for security and bug fixes. Subsequent patch releases on a minor release do not contain backward incompatible changes.

Support policy

We produce new builds of Istio for each commit. Around once a quarter, we build a minor release and run through several additional tests as well as release qualification. We release patch versions for issues found in minor releases.

The various types of releases represent a different product quality level and level of assistance from the Istio community. In this context, support means that the community will produce patch releases for critical issues and offer technical assistance. Separately, 3rd parties and partners may offer longer-term support solutions.

Type	Support Level	Quality and Recommended Use
Development Build	No support	Dangerous, may not be fully reliable. Useful to experiment with.
Minor Release	Support provided until 6 weeks after the N+2 minor release (ex. 1.11 supported until 6 weeks after 1.13.0 is released)
Patch	Same as the corresponding Minor release	Users are encouraged to adopt patch releases as soon as they are available for a given release.
Security Patch	Same as a Patch, but contains a security fix. Sometimes security patches will contain additional code/fixes in addition to the security fixes.	Given the nature of security fixes, users are strongly encouraged to adopt security patches after release.

You can find available releases on the releases page, and if you’re the adventurous type, you can learn about our development builds on the development builds wiki. You can find high-level releases notes for each minor and patch release here.

Naming scheme

Our naming scheme is as follows:

<major>.<minor>.<patch>

where <minor> is increased for each release, and <patch> counts the number of patches for the current <minor> release. A patch is usually a small change relative to the <minor> release.

Control Plane/Data Plane Skew

The Istio control plane can be one version ahead of the data plane. However, the data plane cannot be ahead of control plane. We recommend using revisions so that there is no skew at all.

As of now, data plane to data plane is compatible across all versions; however, this may change in the future.

Support status of Istio releases

Version	Currently Supported	Release Date	End of Life	Supported Kubernetes Versions	Tested, but not supported
master	No, development only			1.26, 1.27, 1.28, 1.29	1.23, 1.24, 1.25
1.21	Yes	Mar 13, 2024	~Dec 2024 (Expected)	1.26, 1.27, 1.28, 1.29	1.23, 1.24, 1.25
1.20	Yes	Nov 14, 2023	~Jul 2024 (Expected)	1.25, 1.26, 1.27, 1.28, 1.29	1.23, 1.24
1.19	No	Sept 5, 2023	Apr 24, 2024	1.25, 1.26, 1.27, 1.28	1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 1.24
1.18	No	Jun 3, 2023	Jan 4, 2024	1.24, 1.25, 1.26, 1.27	1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23
1.17	No	Feb 14, 2023	Oct 27, 2023	1.23, 1.24, 1.25, 1.26	1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22
1.16	No	Nov 15, 2022	Jul 25, 2023	1.22, 1.23, 1.24, 1.25	1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21
1.15	No	Aug 31, 2022	Apr 4, 2023	1.22, 1.23, 1.24, 1.25	1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21
1.14	No	May 24, 2022	Dec 27, 2022	1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 1.24	1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20
1.13	No	Feb 11, 2022	Oct 12, 2022	1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23	1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19

Supported releases without known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs)

Minor Releases	Patched versions with no known CVEs
1.21.x	1.21.2+
1.20.x	1.20.6+

Supported Envoy Versions

Istio’s data plane is based on Envoy.

The relationship between the two project’s versions:

Istio version	Envoy release branch
1.21.x	release/v1.29
1.20.x	release/v1.28

You can find the precise Envoy commit used by Istio in istio/proxy.