Python 3.10 End of Life: What to Do Now

Python 3.10 reached end of life on 1 October 2026, and 3.11 follows in October 2027. What it means, which version to move to, and what breaks on the way.

Python 3.10 reached end of life on 1 October 2026. It no longer gets fixes of any kind, and Python 3.11 is next, scheduled for October 2027. If you run either, plan the move now rather than when something forces it.

For the dates of every version, see the Python end-of-life dates page. For the next version along, see Python 3.12 end of life.

The dates

The Developer’s Guide explains the pattern: support lasts five years from release, and for versions before 3.13 security-only support begins 18 months after release, with no more binaries released. Dates marked as scheduled can be adjusted. The latest releases at the time of writing are 3.10.22 (1 October 2026) and 3.11.18 (25 October 2026), according to endoflife.date.

What end of life means

Nothing stops working on the day. Your code, your virtual environments and your containers keep running. What changes:

• No more security fixes for the interpreter. A vulnerability found in Python 3.10 itself will be fixed in newer versions and not in 3.10.
• Libraries drop support. Packages move their minimum Python forward. Pillow 13, for example, dropped Python 3.10; see the Pillow security guide.
• Tooling follows. CI images, base images and hosting platforms eventually stop offering the version.

Find out where you are still on 3.10

1. Your machine and servers: python --version in each environment, including virtual environments.
2. Your projects: search for requires-python in pyproject.toml, python_requires in setup.py, and python-version in CI files such as GitHub Actions.
3. Containers: search Dockerfiles for FROM python:3.10.
4. Deployment platforms: check which runtime version your host or serverless platform is set to.

Which version to move to

For most projects, go straight to 3.13 or 3.14. Both 3.11 and 3.12 are already in security-only mode, so upgrading to them only postpones the next migration. If you want to go further, see what’s new in Python 3.15 and porting to Python 3.15.

What breaks going from 3.10 to 3.11

From the Python 3.11 release notes:

• Removed: the binhex module, the @asyncio.coroutine() decorator (use async def), inspect.getargspec() and formatargspec() (use inspect.signature()), and the lgettext family in gettext.
• The 'U' file mode is no longer accepted by open(). Use "r"; universal newlines are already the default in text mode.
• random.sample() requires a sequence. Passing a set no longer works; use list(s) or sorted(s). random.shuffle() lost its random parameter.
• Regular expressions: global inline flags such as (?i) are only allowed at the start of a pattern. re.compile(r"abc(?i)") is now an error.
• unittest no longer discovers namespace packages.

What breaks going from 3.11 to 3.12

From the Python 3.12 release notes, the changes most likely to stop an upgrade:

• distutils is gone (PEP 632). setuptools still provides it, so build code that imports it usually keeps working once setuptools is installed.
• imp is gone. Use importlib, for example importlib.util.find_spec() in place of imp.find_module(), and importlib.reload() in place of imp.reload().
• asyncore, asynchat and smtpd are gone. Use asyncio, or aiosmtpd for SMTP servers.
• setuptools is no longer installed in new virtual environments. pkg_resources, setuptools and distutils are not there by default, so projects that need them at runtime must declare and install setuptools.
• Long-deprecated unittest aliases are removed, such as assertEquals (use assertEqual) and failUnless (use assertTrue).
• ssl.wrap_socket() and ssl.match_hostname() are removed. Create an SSLContext and call its wrap_socket().
• f-string tokenizing changed (PEP 701). Tools that use tokenize see FSTRING_START, FSTRING_MIDDLE and FSTRING_END tokens instead of one STRING token.

The changes from 3.12 to 3.13 and 3.13 to 3.14 are listed in the 3.12 end-of-life guide.

A safe way to upgrade

1. Run your tests on the new version with warnings as errors: python -W error -m pytest. A deprecation warning on 3.10 is often a removal two versions later.
2. Search for removed imports first: distutils, imp, asyncore, binhex.
3. Check your dependencies publish wheels for the target version. Packages with compiled extensions are the usual blockers; the dependency security guide covers auditing what you ship.
4. Install the new interpreter with a tool, not by hand. uv can install a Python version and create the environment, and the virtual environments guide explains how environments fit together.
5. Rebuild containers and CI images pinned to 3.10; the Docker guide shows a Dockerfile that keeps rebuilds fast.