Broadcom adds vSphere Express and keeps vSphere 8 on sale in the EEA

Broadcom adds vSphere Express and keeps vSphere 8 on sale in the EEA

4 November 2026: Broadcom has introduced VMware vSphere Express, a cut-down edition for customers running no more than 128 cores across all of their environments. In the same post it said that customers in the European Economic Area can keep buying vSphere 8 Standard and vSphere 8 Enterprise Plus until 31 October 2027. Extended Support comes with any active subscription to those editions until the subscription ends or 31 October 2028, whichever is earlier. For a smaller VMware estate in Europe, the forced move to version 9 is now at least a year further off than it was.

Not yet independently verified. Broadcom has not published a price for vSphere Express or said what Extended Support covers. The 11 October 2027 end of service dates come from its knowledge base article, which the EEA concession does not mention. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What Express includes, and the limit that defines it

Express is built on vSphere 9 and is available now in every region, according to the post by Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of product marketing in Broadcom's VCF division. Broadcom names five capabilities: vMotion live migration, High Availability restart of failed virtual machines, the Distributed Switch, vCenter Quick Patch, and TPM 2.0 and vTPM 2.0 support. The 128-core ceiling counts every environment a customer runs, not each cluster. heise reports that Express is sold only as a subscription with no add-ons. It also reports that an existing vSphere 8 estate can move to Express from version 9.1.1 and later grow into vSphere Foundation.

We list 14 virtualisation products, with VMware vSphere among them.

The EEA concession and what it does not change

The extension applies only to version 8 of the two named editions, and only to customers in EEA countries: the EU members plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Switzerland and the United Kingdom are outside it. Broadcom's separate knowledge base article still lists 11 October 2027 as the end of service for ESXi 8, vCenter Server 8, vSAN 8, NSX 4, VCF 5.2 and Aria 8.18. After that date, it says, there will be "no Technical Support and no new patches" for those versions. The announcement does not explain how Extended Support for EEA subscribers relates to that date or what it covers. heise also notes that the post says nothing about perpetual licences.

Questions to put to a Broadcom partner now

An EEA customer on vSphere 8 Standard or Enterprise Plus can ask three things. When does its own subscription end, given that the support window closes at that date if it comes first? What exactly does Extended Support provide after 11 October 2027: security patches, technical support or both? And would Express be cheaper than renewing at its core count? A customer outside the EEA gets nothing new from this announcement and should plan around the October 2027 dates in the knowledge base.

The post also confirms that VCF 9.1.1 has been generally available since 3 September 2026. Broadcom expects the next VCF release in the first quarter of its 2027 financial year.

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Sources

• Broadcom VCF blog: Broadcom Updates VMware Portfolio to Protect and Accelerate Private AI Cloud Deployments, 4 November 2026
• Broadcom knowledge base 456708: Upcoming End of Service for vSphere 8, vSAN 8, Aria 8, NSX 4 and VCF 5 product suite (read 5 November 2026), 5 November 2026
• heise online: VMware: Schonfrist fuer Admins, 5 November 2026