Apache Airflow® 2 End of Life:
What You Need to Know
Open-source Airflow 2 reaches end-of-life in April 2026. Here's what that means for your organization, the risks of staying on unsupported versions, and how to plan your upgrade to Airflow 3.
Timeline
The Airflow 2 Support Timeline
Understanding where we are in the Airflow 2 lifecycle helps you plan your migration timeline appropriately.
Completed
April 22, 2025
Airflow 3.0 Released
Airflow 3.0 shipped with migration tooling. Airflow 3.1 followed in September 2025, battle-tested for enterprise adoption.
Completed
October 2025
Limited Maintenance Begins
Airflow 2 entered limited maintenance. Security and critical bug fixes only, no new features.
Active Now
October 2025 – April 2026
Migration Window
This is your window to upgrade. Airflow 2 is still receiving critical patches while you plan and execute your migration.
Approaching
April 22, 2026
OSS End of Life
No more updates of any kind for open-source Airflow 2. Organizations must be on Airflow 3 or accept the risks.
Understanding the Risks
What Does It Mean to Run an Unsupported Version?
Continuing to run Open-source Airflow 2.x after EOL exposes your organization to several categories of risk that compound over time.
Security & Compliance Risk
No critical bug fixes or security patches. Vulnerabilities discovered after the EOL date will remain unaddressed, potentially putting your data pipelines and connected systems at risk. For regulated industries, running unsupported software may create compliance issues.
Operational Risk
No guarantee of compatibility with new Python versions, operating system updates, certificate changes, or dependent library updates. Over time, your environment becomes increasingly fragile and difficult to maintain.
Ecosystem Disruption
Provider packages for Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and other platforms will begin requiring Airflow 3. As the ecosystem moves forward, maintaining Airflow 2 compatibility becomes increasingly difficult and eventually impossible.
What You Gain
Why Airflow 3 Is Worth the Upgrade
Beyond eliminating EOL risk, Airflow 3 delivers long-anticipated features that make data engineers significantly more productive.
DAG Versioning What This Unlocks
One Orchestrator for Everything
Airflow 3's new capabilities eliminate the need for orchestrator sprawl.
Use cases that previously required separate tools or painful workarounds now work natively.
Stop the Orchestrator Sprawl
Many organizations ended up with multiple orchestration tools because Airflow 2 couldn't handle certain use cases well. Airflow 3 closes those gaps. Before adopting yet another tool, see if Airflow 3 can consolidate your stack.
Talk to an Expert →
Getting Started
Your Upgrade Path at a Glance
A successful Airflow upgrade requires planning. Here's the high-level approach. We've also published a detailed guide with technical specifications.
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Assess Your Current State
Inventory your DAGs, custom operators, and provider packages. Identify which use removed or deprecated syntax that requires change. Airflow ruff rules are available for easy identification of mandatory and suggested code changes.
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Review Breaking Changes
Read through the breaking changes section in the Upgrading eBook or Airflow release notes and assess if your DAGs use any of the patterns that need to be changed.
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Upgrade to Airflow 2.11 First
If you're on an earlier 2.x version, upgrade to 2.11 to take advantage of deprecation warnings that highlight required changes.
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Clean Your Metadata Database
Archive old XCom data and task run history. Large tables can significantly slow the upgrade process due to schema migrations.
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Update & Test Your DAGs
Refactor deprecated patterns, update import paths, and use automated tooling like ruff to catch common issues. Test your changes locally using the Astro CLI or in the cloud with the Astro IDE.
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Execute the Upgrade
Deploy to Airflow 3.1 in a test environment first, validate your DAGs, then promote to production with confidence.
Ready for the technical details? Our comprehensive upgrade guide covers prerequisites, configuration changes, DAG refactoring patterns, and automated tooling to streamline your migration.
Why Partner With Us
Astronomer Makes Your Upgrade Easier
We're the company behind Astro, the leading managed Airflow platform. We're also the largest contributor to Apache Airflow® itself. No one knows Airflow better than us.
Extended Airflow 2 Support
Astro provides full Airflow 2 support, including security and critical fixes, through April 2027, giving you up to 12 months to plan and execute your upgrade without rushing.
In-Place Upgrades
Upgrade your existing Astro environment to Airflow 3 without creating entirely new infrastructure. Less migration complexity, less risk.
Expert Migration Support
Hands-on guidance from the Airflow experts for DAGs that need refactoring. We've helped hundreds of organizations upgrade successfully.
Safety Net Rollbacks
Astro's deployment rollback feature lets you revert to earlier Airflow versions if issues arise. Move fast with confidence. See rollback requirements →
Full Airflow 3 Enablement
Beyond the upgrade itself, we help you adopt Airflow 3's new features and architectural patterns to maximize the value of your investment.
Run Airflow in any environment
If you're in a highly regulated industry needing to execute Airflow on dedicated infrastructure or your own cloud Astronomer offers hosted, on premises, or Remote Execution Agents solutions to run tasks anywhere.
You Can Be Relaxed About Airflow EOL with Astro
April 2026 might be coming up, but Astronomer is here to help. Talk to our team about your timeline and environment, or get started with our step-by-step upgrading guide.
