Debian Releases
Debian always has at least
three releases in active maintenance: stable
, testing
and
unstable
.
- stable
-
The stable
distribution contains the latest officially
released distribution of Debian.
This is the production release of Debian, the one which we primarily
recommend using.
The current stable
distribution of Debian is version
13, codenamed trixie.
It was initially released as version 13.0
on August 9th, 2025 and its latest
update, version 13.7, was released on September 12th, 2026.
- testing
-
The testing
distribution contains packages that haven't been
accepted into a stable
release yet, but they are in the queue for
that. The main advantage of using this distribution is that it has more
recent versions of software.
See the Debian FAQ for more information on
what is testing
and how it becomes
stable
.
The current testing
distribution is forky.
- unstable
-
The unstable
distribution is where active development of
Debian occurs. Generally, this distribution is run by developers
and those who like to live on the edge. It is recommended that users
running unstable should subscribe to the debian-devel-announce
mailing list to receive notifications of major changes, for example
upgrades that may break.
The unstable
distribution is always called sid.
Release life cycle
Debian announces its new stable release on a regular basis. The Debian
release life cycle encompasses five years: the first three years of full
support followed by two years of Long Term Support (LTS).
See Debian Releases
Wiki page and Debian LTS
Wiki page for detailed information.
Index of releases
See the Debian FAQ for an explanation of
where
all these codenames came from.
| Version |
Code Name |
Release Date |
End of Life (EOL) |
End of LTS |
End of ELTS |
Status |
| 15 |
Duke |
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
Codename announced |
| 14 |
Forky |
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
testing — no release date has been set |
| 13 |
Trixie |
2025-08-09 |
2028-08-09 |
2030-06-30 |
2035-06-30 |
Current stable release |
| 12 |
Bookworm |
2023-06-10 |
2026-07-11 |
2028-06-30 |
2033-06-30 |
Current oldstable release |
| 11 |
Bullseye |
2021-08-14 |
2024-08-14 |
2026-08-31 |
2031-06-30 |
Current oldoldstable release, under LTS support |
| 10 |
Buster |
2019-07-06 |
2022-09-10 |
2024-06-30 |
2029-06-30 |
Archived release, under third-party paid extended LTS support |
| 9 |
Stretch |
2017-06-17 |
2020-07-18 |
2022-07-01 |
2027-06-30 |
Archived release, under third-party paid extended LTS support |
Historic releases
The web pages for the obsolete Debian releases are kept intact, but
the releases themselves can only be found in a separate
archive.
| Version |
Code Name |
Release Date |
End of Life (EOL) |
End of LTS |
End of ELTS |
| 8 |
Jessie |
2015-04-25 |
2018-06-17 |
2020-06-30 |
2025-06-30 |
| 7 |
Wheezy |
2013-05-04 |
2016-04-25 |
2018-05-31 |
~2020-06-30 |
| 6 |
Squeeze |
2011-02-06 |
2014-05-31 |
2016-02-29 |
— |
| 5 |
Lenny |
2009-02-14 |
2012-02-06 |
— |
— |
| 4 |
Etch |
2007-04-08 |
2010-02-15 |
— |
— |
| 3.1 |
Sarge |
2005-06-06 |
2008-03-31 |
— |
— |
| 3.0 |
Woody |
2002-07-19 |
2006-06-30 |
— |
— |
| 2.2 |
Potato |
2000-08-15 |
2003-06-30 |
— |
— |
| 2.1 |
Slink |
1999-03-09 |
2000-09-30 |
2000-10-30 |
— |
| 2.0 |
Hamm |
1998-07-24 |
— |
— |
— |
| 1.3 |
Bo |
1997-07-02 |
— |
— |
— |
| 1.2 |
Rex |
1996-12-12 |
— |
— |
— |
| 1.1 |
Buzz |
1996-06-17 |
— |
— |
— |
| 0.93R6 |
— |
1995-10-26 |
— |
— |
— |
| 0.93R5 |
— |
~1995-03-01 |
— |
— |
— |
| 0.91 |
— |
~1994-01-01 |
— |
— |
— |
Integrity of the data in the releases
Data integrity is granted by a digitally signed Release
file. To ensure that all files in the release belong to it, checksums of
all Packages files are copied into the Release
file.
Digital signatures for this file are stored in the file
Release.gpg, using the current version of the archive signing
key. For stable
and oldstable
an additional signature is
generated using an offline key specifically generated for a release
by a member of the Stable Release Team.
