Runtime Lifecycle Briefing — .NET 5 End of Support
.NET 5 reached end of support on 8 May 2022, halting security updates for the short-term release and requiring organisations to complete migrations to .NET 6 or later.
Executive briefing: Microsoft ended support for .NET 5.0 on , meaning the runtime no longer receives patches, technical assistance, or security fixes.
Impact
- Security risk. CVEs disclosed after the deadline will not be backported, exposing workloads that stay on .NET 5.
- Platform coverage. Cloud images, container base layers, and managed services are removing .NET 5 support, risking build and deployment failures.
- Compliance. Auditors expect evidence of migration to an LTS release (e.g., .NET 6 or .NET 8) as part of secure SDLC controls.
Required actions
- Inventory services, serverless functions, and tools pinned to .NET 5 and schedule upgrades to a supported LTS version.
- Update CI/CD images, container registries, and infrastructure-as-code modules to remove .NET 5 SDK downloads.
- Capture regression test results and change-management evidence to document compliance with Microsoft’s support policy.