Microsoft: End of Support for .NET 5.0 on May 8, 2022

At the .NET Conference 2021, Microsoft announced that .NET 5 will end support on May 8, 2022, while launching .NET 6.

In an official blog post published on March 24, Microsoft once again urged .NET 5 users to upgrade to the new version as soon as possible, otherwise service updates including security fixes and technical support will not be available.

Since .NET 5.0 is not an LTS release, it will end support 18 months after its release or 6 months after the next release, whichever is longer.

When .NET 5.0 support ends, applications using this version will continue to work, but may not be secure because Microsoft only releases security updates for the supported versions of .NET (ie .NET Core 3.1 and .NET 6.0).

If you are an end user, Microsoft recommends contacting the vendor that manages your software to determine if an updated version of the software is required and available. If your application uses .NET 5.0, Microsoft strongly recommends that you migrate your application to .NET 6.0 -- a supported LTS version. You can download .NET 6.0 from the .NET website.

How to upgrade to .NET 6.0?

• Open the project file (.csproj, .vbproj or *.fsproj file).
• Change the target frame value from net5.0 to net6.0, the target frame is defined by the or element.
• See the .NET 6 Compatibility Guide for more migration issues.

Note that Visual Studio 16.11 will continue to support the .NET 5.0 SDK version until .NET Core 3.1 ends support in December 2022. However, the .NET 5.0 SDK does not use the .NET 5.0 runtime when running command-line scenarios, and is not available as a standalone SDK. Therefore, Microsoft officially recommends using .NET 6.0 and Visual Studio 2022 to build applications that run on supported .NET runtimes.

For more details, please check the official website announcement: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/dotnet-5-end-of-support-update/