Elasticsearch Version History & Release Schedule (2026)

In this tutorial, you'll learn about Elasticsearch Version History & Release Schedule (2026). We cover key concepts, practical examples, and best practices to help you understand and apply this topic effectively.

Elasticsearch version history from 0.4 (2010) through 8.x documents release dates, breaking changes, support timelines, and upgrade paths for every major release. Elastic N.V. maintains a rolling release cadence with major versions every 2–3 years and approximately 3–4 years of support for each major line. Understanding the Elasticsearch version lifecycle is essential for production clusters — running an unsupported version means no security patches for CVEs, risking data exposure in search-powered applications like Doda Browser's document indexing and Durga Antivirus Pro's log analysis pipeline.

Elasticsearch Version Support Table

Elasticsearch Feature History

| Version | Release Date | Key Features | |---------|-------------|-------------| | 0.4 | Feb 2010 | Initial public release, REST API, Lucene integration | | 0.7 | May 2010 | Gateway recovery, plugins | | 0.9 | Jul 2010 | Distributed search improvements | | 0.18 | Feb 2011 | Snapshot/restore | | 0.19 | Apr 2011 | River (now deprecated) | | 0.20 | Jul 2011 | Percolator | | 0.90 | Feb 2013 | Stable pre-1.0 release | | 1.0 | Feb 2014 | Aggregations, snapshot/restore GA, CAT APIs | | 1.4 | Oct 2014 | Aggregation performance, scripted fields | | 2.0 | Oct 2015 | Pipeline aggregations, matrix stats, query DSL changes | | 5.0 | Oct 2016 | Lucene 6, Ingest Node, Painless scripting, Kibana 5 | | 6.0 | Nov 2017 | Sparse documents, sequence IDs, Zen2, indices split/shrink | | 7.0 | Apr 2019 | Lucene 8, fewer primary shards, _doc type removal, frozen indices | | 7.10 | Nov 2020 | License change (SSPL), last Apache 2.0 version | | 7.17 | Feb 2022 | Last 7.x release, extended maintenance | | 8.0 | Feb 2022 | NLP inference, vector search GA, security defaults enforced | | 8.5 | Oct 2022 | KNN search performance, compressed TSDB | | 8.11 | Nov 2023 | Hybrid search, RRF ranking | | 8.13 | Apr 2024 | Elasticsearch Query Language (ES|QL) GA |

Elasticsearch Support Policy

Elastic N.V. divides support into three phases for each major version:

• Standard Support: Bug fixes, security patches, feature backports — approximately 2–3 years from the initial major release.
• Extended Maintenance: Critical security fixes only — approximately 1 year after Standard Support ends.
• End of Life: No updates of any kind. Cluster is vulnerable to newly discovered CVEs.

The support clock starts from the first release of a major version line (e.g., 7.0.0) and ends on a fixed date regardless of how many minor or patch releases follow.

Key Support Details

• Elasticsearch 7.x reached EOL in August 2024. All clusters must be on 8.x.
• Elasticsearch 8.x is the current major version with active support.
• License change at 7.11: Elasticsearch and Kibana moved from Apache 2.0 to the Elastic License / SSPL. The last Apache 2.0 release was 7.10. OpenSearch (AWS) forked from 7.10.
• Major version upgrades require an index upgrade — indices from the previous major version must be reindexed or explicitly upgraded via _upgrade API (deprecated in 8.x).

How to Check Your Elasticsearch Version

curl http://localhost:9200

Expected output:

{
  "version" : {
    "number" : "8.13.4",
    "build_flavor" : "default",
    "build_type" : "tar",
    "build_hash" : "d7f8978",
    "build_date" : "2024-04-02T10:15:22.825291Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "9.10.0",
    "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "7.17.0",
    "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "7.0.0"
  }
}

The minimum_wire_compatibility_version tells you the oldest cluster node version you can connect to. The minimum_index_compatibility_version tells you the oldest index version Elasticsearch can read.

Upgrade Path

Breaking Changes Across Major Versions

• 2.x → 5.x: Query DSL changes, removed _timestamp and _ttl fields, aggregation changes.
• 5.x → 6.x: Multiple mapping types removed (one type per index), indices created with single type.
• 6.x → 7.x: _doc type removal, max_result_window default reduced, _all field removed.
• 7.x → 8.x: Security enabled by default, no more routing and index in bulk API, TLS required for production.

FAQ

Related Schedules

• Node.js Release Schedule
• Python Version EOL Schedule
• Redis Version EOL