If you’ve been procrastinating your move from Windows 10 to 11, we’ve got some good news to share. Microsoft is offering people another year of Windows 10 support.
As PCMag reports, although official support for the older operating system ended in October 2025, Microsoft had provided an extra year of security patches through its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. That was supposed to end on Oct. 13, 2026, but a note on Microsoft’s support page now says the program will end on Oct. 12, 2027.
“Windows 10 support has ended. You can enroll in ESU any time until the program ends on October 12, 2027,” Microsoft writes. “If you’re already enrolled, your coverage will automatically continue through that date—no action needed.”
To enroll, you can either pay $30 or do one of the following: Cash in 1,000 points from Microsoft’s Rewards program or sync your Windows Backup to Microsoft OneDrive. For the latter, you might need to buy extra OneDrive storage; the default is 5GB for free.
There are a few requirements to enroll in ESU:
- Devices need to be running Windows 10, version 22H2 Home, Professional, Pro Education, or Workstations edition.
- Devices need to have the latest Windows update installed.
- The Microsoft account used to sign in to the device must be an administrator account.
- The Microsoft account can’t be a child account.
As of May 2026, Windows 11 had 71.69% of the worldwide Windows market share, while Windows 10 was at 26.36%, according to StatCounter. That’s up from 55.18% on Windows 11 and 41.71% on Windows 10 in October 2025, when support ended. However, over 25% is still a pretty large number, and Microsoft clearly sees the benefit of keeping those users safe.
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