openSUSE is making some welcome changes to how long its community distributions are supported. Leap 15, already known for its unusually long run (initially released in May 2018), will now keep receiving updates until April 30, 2026. That’s four months longer than originally planned, making the release one of the longest-supported in openSUSE’s history.
Normally, Leap follows a 12-month cycle plus six months of overlap to give users a smooth upgrade path. But because Leap 16.0 is scheduled for release next month (October 2025), Leap 15.6 was extended to preserve the six-month handoff. In the end, Leap 15 will clock in at more than 1.5 times the standard 60 months of support that many long-term distributions provide.
But what’s more important, Leap 16 is expected to push things even further. Each release will now receive a full 24 months of community maintenance updates, with overlap between versions. If the plan holds, the Leap 16 series will run through version 16.6 in Fall 2031, and updates will continue until Leap 17.1 ships two years later.
At the same time, Leap Micro, the immutable server edition, is being aligned with the same schedule. It effectively becomes part of the Leap 16 family, receiving the same two-year lifecycle.
Moreover, the openSUSE team acknowledges that the long Leap 15 cycle left some parts of the system outdated. Leap 15.6 and the corresponding SLES refresh have already addressed some of the major pain points, such as older versions of Ruby and system Python.
To avoid the same problem in the next cycle, Leap 16 will revisit the so-called “tic-toc” model. According to openSUSE, instead of strictly alternating between feature releases and maintenance releases, product management will have more flexibility to roll in larger ecosystem updates when necessary.
For more information, see the announcement.
