Heroku-22 reaches end of life on 30 April 2027; move apps now

Heroku-22 reaches end of life on 30 April 2027; move apps now

20 October 2026: Heroku's Heroku-22 stack, the Ubuntu 22.04-based runtime many older apps still run on, "is deprecated and will reach end-of-life on April 30th, 2027," the platform repeated on 20 October as it shipped security updates to all three of its current stacks. Teams with apps on Heroku-22 have just over six months to move them to Heroku-24 or Heroku-26.

Not yet independently verified. Rests on Heroku's own Dev Center pages; we have not read its Heroku-22 end-of-life FAQ. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The 20 October stack update

Heroku updated the heroku-22, heroku-24 and heroku-26 base images to pick up security and bug fixes in upstream packages, rolling out first to the Common Runtime and then to Private Spaces. The changes are new ca-certificates packages on every stack and updated xz and liblzma packages:

Stack	liblzma and xz-utils
heroku-22	5.2.5-2ubuntu1.1 to 5.2.5-2ubuntu1.2
heroku-24	5.6.1+really5.4.5-1ubuntu0.3 to 5.6.1+really5.4.5-1ubuntu0.4
heroku-26	5.8.3-1 to 5.8.3-1ubuntu0.1 (development package)

Apps built with Heroku's buildpacks need no redeploy: Cedar-generation slugs are laid over the newest base image each time a dyno starts, and Fir-generation images are rebased. Apps on the container stack are different, and "must rebuild" their Docker image to pick up the fixes.

Planning the move off Heroku-22

Heroku's upgrade guide describes a stack change as much like a normal deploy: the app's stack setting is changed, then a new build creates a slug that targets the new stack. The work is in what the build depends on. Each stack ships a newer Ubuntu with newer system libraries, so native extensions, buildpack versions and language runtimes pinned for 22.04 can break. Heroku notes that anyone jumping more than one generation, from Heroku-22 straight to Heroku-26, should read the upgrade notes for every stack in between.

A practical route is to create a staging copy of each app on the new stack, run its tests there, and switch production once it passes. Apps that run on the container stack need the same check for their base images.

Where Heroku fits

Heroku is Salesforce's platform-as-a-service. Teams that use the end-of-life date as a prompt to look at alternatives will find Vercel, Netlify and Railway among the platforms in our DevOps software category, which lists 16 products; moving platform is a bigger job than moving stack, and rarely fits a six-month window for many apps at once.

Sources

• Heroku Dev Center: Heroku-22, Heroku-24 and Heroku-26 stacks updated (changelog item 3842), 20 October 2026
• Heroku Dev Center: Upgrading to the latest stack (read 2026-10-20), 20 October 2026