[Windows, Ubuntu] Python 3.8.x will be removed from 2025-06-06

[hemanthmanga]

Breaking changes

Python 3.8.x will be removed from Windows 2019, Windows 2022, Ubuntu 2022 images.

Target date

Image deployment will start on 2025-06-02 and will take 2-3 days

The motivation for the changes

As per our software support policy, we are supporting only 5 most popular python versions while python 3.8.x has been EOL.

Possible impact

If your projects depend on python 3.8.x they might be broken.

Platforms affected

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions

Runner images affected

• Ubuntu 20.04
• Ubuntu 22.04
• Ubuntu 24.04
• macOS 13
• macOS 13 Arm64
• macOS 14
• macOS 14 Arm64
• macOS 15
• macOS 15 Arm64
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022
• Windows Server 2025

Mitigation ways

For GitHub Actions the python 3.8.x archives will still be available through the actions/setup-python action.

[xavier2k6]

What is the ETA for Python 3.8 removal on macOS 13?
https://github.com/actions/runner-images/blob/main/images/macos/macos-13-Readme.md#python

[hemanthmanga]

The changes are complete. Closing now.