AAP 2.6 enters maintenance as 2.5 starts its final support year
The October lifecycle transition narrows the kinds of fixes Red Hat will accept and gives platform teams a dated migration boundary.
Red Hat has moved Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 into Maintenance Support 1 and AAP 2.5 into Maintenance Support 2, turning an ordinary calendar transition into a planning deadline for automation teams.
The support window has narrowed
Red Hat’s AAP lifecycle policy now places 2.6 in Maintenance Support 1 from October 2, 2026 through October 1, 2027. The branch is scheduled for Maintenance Support 2 from October 2, 2027 through October 1, 2028.
AAP 2.5 has moved one step further, into Maintenance Support 2. Its published timeline runs only through 2027, making this the branch’s final scheduled support year.
The phase labels matter because the allowed change set contracts after Full Support. Red Hat’s table says Maintenance Support 1 provides Critical-only bug fixes alongside Critical and Important security fixes. Maintenance Support 2 is narrower still: customers should not expect new features, broad hardware enablement or routine enhancements on the aging branch.
What platform teams should decide now
Teams on 2.5 should treat the remaining window as migration time, not as another feature cycle. The practical question is whether to move first to 2.6 or plan directly around 2.7, based on the organization’s OpenShift and RHEL estate and the time needed to validate controllers, execution environments, private automation hub content and external integrations.
The current compatibility matrix gives that decision concrete boundaries. Red Hat lists AAP 2.6 with ansible-core 2.16, OpenShift 4.14 through 4.22, PostgreSQL 15 through 17, RPM installation on RHEL 9, and containerized installation on RHEL 9 or 10. AAP 2.5 is listed with ansible-core 2.16, OpenShift 4.12 through 4.20, PostgreSQL 15, RPM installation on RHEL 8 or 9, and containerized installation on RHEL 9 or 10.
That means a migration can intersect with database, OpenShift and host-operating-system changes rather than being a controller-only upgrade. Teams should inventory those dependencies while 2.5 is still supported and schedule testing before its final window closes.
The change is not an emergency, but it is a dated architectural constraint. Remaining on 2.5 trades migration work now for a shrinking remediation path; 2.6 buys more runway, but it too is already out of Full Support.
sources
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Life Cycleaccess.redhat.com
comments · 0