Lifecycle

balena Product Lifecycle

Release dates, version history and end-of-support dates for 4 balena products and 17 versions.

Releases and Lifecycle

Release dates, version history and support and end-of-life dates as published by balena. Dates within the next 12 months are highlighted; past dates are dimmed. Retrieved 2026-10-14.

balenaOS ESR process. Extended Support Release versions are published quarterly and each receives backports of high-risk security fixes and critical bug fixes for nine months from release. [1]
Rolling releases. A rolling balenaOS release is no longer officially maintained once the next rolling release is published. [2]

balenaEtcher 9 versions

Release dates only; no support policy published.

Version	Released	End of life	Source
2.1	27 Feb 2025	–	[4]
2.0	20 Feb 2025	–	[4]
1.19	21 Dec 2023	–	[4]
1.18	14 Feb 2023	–	[4]
1.17	14 Feb 2023	–	[4]
1.16	14 Feb 2023	–	[4]
1.15	1 Feb 2023	–	[4]
1.14	16 Jan 2023	–	[4]
1.13	2 Jan 2023	–	[4]

balenaOS 8 versions

Rolling releases are supported only until the next release. ESR releases (named yyyy.m, released quarterly) are supported for nine months. The versions below are meta-balena major versions plus the ESR line the vendor documents as an example.

Version	Released	End of life	Source
8.x	17 Aug 2026	–	[3]
7.x	24 Apr 2026	–	[3]
ESR 2026.1ESR process	Jan 2026	Oct 2026	[1]
6.x	19 Jul 2024	–	[3]
5.x	28 Nov 2023	–	[3]
4.x	6 Sep 2023	–	[3]
3.x	4 Jul 2023	–	[3]
2.x	31 Mar 2017	–	[3]

No published lifecycle 2: balenaCloud, openBalena

Sources 4

Extended Support Release (ESR) process retrieved 2026-10-14
Defaulting to stability: understanding balenaOS ESR changes retrieved 2026-10-14
meta-balena CHANGELOG (balenaOS) retrieved 2026-10-14
Releases - balena-io/etcher retrieved 2026-10-14