Kaushal Thanks for your message. While Apache Fineract would prefer to offer a LTS release there are no volunteers available for that effort.
We ask that concerned individuals and vendors step up their efforts and get involved. If you would like to backport certain changes to 1.15.x and create a patch release all you have to do is put some developers on the tasks, communicate well, then see is one of our volunteer release managers would like to help out. At this time, we advise all users to upgrade to the current release. The CVEs closed in this release are public and you should evaluate your level of risk. As the project, we cannot advise you. There are release notes as well. Our license is clear: please refer to that. We have been following this pattern of release and retirement of previous release for the last two years so this is not a change. Please note that we try for quarterly releases. There are some upgrade migration scripts in our release process. Comments inline Thanks James Sent from Gmail Mobile On Mon, Nov 2, 2026 at 8:14 AM Kaushal Shriyan <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Team, > > We have noticed that Apache Fineract 1.15.0 is now marked as End of Life > (EOL) on the official Apache Fineract website, while version 1.16.1 is > listed as the current stable release (https://fineract.apache.org/) > > Since we are currently running Fineract 1.15.0 in our production CBS > environment, we would like to understand the implications of this EOL > status and evaluate the upgrade to version 1.16.1. > > We would appreciate clarification on the following points: > > EOL and Production Support: What does EOL specifically mean for Fineract > 1.15.0? Does it mean that no further bug fixes, security patches, stability > improvements or maintenance releases will be provided for this version? > Correct > > Security Updates: Will security vulnerabilities identified in Fineract > 1.15.0 be addressed through subsequent patch releases, or are security > fixes available only by upgrading to a newer release? We noticed that the > official security reports list vulnerabilities affecting 1.15.0 and earlier > versions, with fixes included in 1.16.1. > No back porting planned see EOL. > > LTS or Maintenance Release Strategy: Does Apache Fineract follow a > Long-Term Support (LTS) model similar to enterprise Linux distributions, > where a particular release receives security updates and critical bug fixes > for an extended period? Or is the project following a regular release cycle > in which older versions become unsupported once newer versions are released? > The latter . See my comments > > > Upgrade Considerations: What are the major changes and potential > compatibility considerations when upgrading from Fineract 1.15.0 to 1.16.1, > particularly regarding Java 25, Spring Boot 4, database migrations, custom > plugins and existing API integrations? > See readme and scripts and so on. > Recommended Production Strategy: For institutions running Fineract in > production, what is the recommended approach to managing upgrades, security > patches and version compatibility without introducing unnecessary risks to > the CBS environment? > I cannot recommend but suggest that you have a team writing tests and ensuring upgrade paths to upstream dev exists or you're effectively forking the project and thereby taking on responsibility for a huge code base. > As Apache Fineract is being used as the core banking platform in our > production environment, long-term stability, security maintenance and > predictable upgrade cycles are particularly important to us. > Understood. Please get involved. This isn't free lunch it's free speech. > > We would appreciate your guidance on the recommended upgrade strategy and > whether there are any plans to introduce LTS releases or extended > maintenance support for production deployments. > I have ideas and we've tried several times to encourage such a plan. Also > We would welcome a team working on that. We have no $$, we have no corporate backing this, this is an ASF project. Vendor neutral space where we all gain by contributing upstream. > Thank you, and we look forward to your clarification. > > Best regards, > > Kaushal >
