The end of support for .NET Core 3.1 is coming
Kentico Xperience 13 will stop supporting .NET Core 3.1 in Q1 2023. I believe that most of the projects are already running on .NET 6, the latest LTS version, but for those who are still on .NET Core 3.1, I will explain what steps are needed to update your project to .NET 6, why it is important and what you can expect in regards of .NET support in Kentico products (Kentico Xperience 13 and Xperience by Kentico).
Microsoft will end .NET Core 3.1 support on December 13, 2022. After this date no bug fixes, new features and, most importantly, no security patches will be delivered. The Kentico Xperience 13 Nuget packages will target the .NET 6 only in March 2023, after that point projects running on .NET Core 3.1. won’t be able to update the packages. Kentico Xperience 13 has been supporting .NET 6 since January 2022 and the update from .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 6 should be straightforward, you can read more about the update process in the following article:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-3-1-will-reach-end-of-support-on-december-13-2022/
.NET support strategy
Microsoft releases new major version every year in November, but it doesn’t mean that you are forced to update the .NET target every year. The even-numbered versions (.NET 6, .NET 8, …) have long-term support. The minimum supported .NET version of Kentico products will be the lowest LTS version supported by Microsoft. So the next forced update will be in Q1 2025 when support of .NET 6 ends.
The support of the new .NET LTS version will be announced ASAP after the official release to allow you to update your project to the next LTS version within the one-year overlap, where two LTS versions are supported.
As for the non-LTS versions (.NET 7, .NET 9, …), we want to start supporting them as soon as we can. If we encounter some complex incompatibility, the support might be added with a delay, with some limitations, or skipped altogether in favor of supporting the next LTS version.