Linux kernel 7.1 reached end of life on September 2, 2026. Kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman closed the branch with the release of 7.1.13, the final version in the series, and confirmed no further patches will follow.
If you're running kernel 7.1 today, the Linux kernel 7.1 end of life announcement means your system will stop receiving fixes for any vulnerability discovered from this point forward.
No Further Patches for 7.1
Any CVE found in the Linux kernel after September 2, 2026 will be patched in supported branches only. Systems still running 7.1 carry that exposure indefinitely, with no fix available through the 7.1 series itself.
The Announcement
Kroah-Hartman posted the end-of-life notice to the kernel mailing list alongside the 7.1.13 release, telling users the 7.1.y series is now closed and that they should move to 7.2.y going forward. However, this EOL only applies to the upstream kernel.org branch. If your distribution ships 7.1 as its default or HWE kernel, it will continue receiving security patches for a longer window than upstream does.
A Pattern You've Seen Before
This is the second Linux 7.x branch to reach end of life this year. Kernel 7.0 went EOL in June after its own short run, and 7.1 has now followed the same path roughly three months later. Kernel 7.2, released in mid-August, will eventually do the same.
Short-lived branches exist to carry new features into the kernel quickly, while the ecosystem tests them ahead of the next long-term support release. Anyone running 7.0, then 7.1, has effectively been on a rolling three-month upgrade schedule since June. That's a reasonable pace for a developer chasing the newest driver support or filesystem feature. It's a poor fit for a production server someone expects to leave alone for a year.
What Shipped in Linux Kernel 7.1
Kernel 7.1 arrived in June 2026 with a rewritten NTFS filesystem implementation, a project that had been in development for roughly four years. The rewrite added full write support with delayed allocation, iomap integration, and folio support, aimed at improving write performance over the older NTFS driver. It also introduced ntfsprogs-plus, a new set of userspace utilities for working with NTFS partitions.
None of that changes now that the branch is EOL – the features remain in the kernel. What changes is that any bug found in that code, or anywhere else in 7.1, no longer gets fixed in this series.
What's New in Linux Kernel 7.2
Linux kernel 7.2 was released August 16, 2026, with cache-aware load-balancing support and initial HDMI 2.1 FRL support for AMD GPUs, along with continued refinement of the NTFS filesystem work introduced in 7.1. The full changelog is available at kernel.org for anyone wanting the complete list of changes.
Kernel 7.2 is already available in the stable repositories of some rolling-release distributions, including Arch Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Which Kernel Should You Run?
For systems where stability matters more than having the newest driver support, an LTS branch is the better choice. Current LTS branches and their support windows:
| Kernel | Released | Supported Until |
|---|---|---|
| 6.1 LTS | Dec 2022 | Dec 2027 |
| 6.6 LTS | Oct 2023 | Dec 2027 |
| 6.12 LTS | Nov 2024 | Dec 2028 |
| 6.18 LTS | Nov 2025 | Dec 2028 |
Both 6.12 and 6.18 have several years of remaining support and are reasonable defaults for production systems.
How to Check Your Kernel Version
uname -r
If the output starts with 7.1, you're on the branch that just reached end of life. If it starts with 7.2, you're on the current short-lived branch. Anything starting with 6.1, 6.6, 6.12, or 6.18 puts you on a supported LTS branch.
Upgrade Path
Distribution-managed kernel
# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
# RHEL/CentOS/AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux
sudo dnf update
# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -Syu
Manually compiled kernel
If you build your own kernel, download the 7.2 source from kernel.org and follow your existing build process.
Summary
Linux kernel 7.1 end of life arrived on September 2, 2026, closing the branch after roughly three months of support. It's the second short-lived 7.x branch to reach this point this year, and 7.2 is set to follow the same timeline. For anyone tired of tracking these dates every few months, an LTS branch like 6.12 or 6.18 removes the need to.
Track the EOL status of Linux kernel branches and distribution versions here.