![[Important]](/media/com_docimport/admonition/important.png) | Important |
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We only provide a migration path from Joomla 4.3 to Joomla 5. If you are using an earlier Joomla 4.x version please upgrade to Joomla 4.3 first. You cannot migrate from Joomla 4 to Joomla 6 or later. You will need to migrate to Joomla 5 first. |
The changes from Joomla! 4 to Joomla! 5 have been small enough that we were able to provide support for both versions of Joomla! as of Akeeba Backup for Joomla! version 9.8.0.
On your Joomla! 4 site
You can only update from Joomla 4.4 to Joomla 5. If you are using an earlier version of Joomla, you MUST first upgrade to Joomla 4.4. Please consult the previous chapter in this documentation section for information on Joomla 4 minor version updates.
If you are still using Akeeba Backup 8, you MUST upgrade to Akeeba Backup 9, as per the previous chapter in this documentation section which described the Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 upgrade.
Make sure that your site is fulfilling all of the technical requirements to run Joomla 5 as detailed in Joomla's manual.
Make sure that you upgrade to the latest available Akeeba Backup 9 version for your site. Kindly note that only Akeeba Backup 9.8.0 and later are support on Joomla 5 as per our Compatibility page.
You can then update to Joomla 5.
![[Note]](/media/com_docimport/admonition/note.png) | Note |
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The Joomla! Update component frequently displays wrong and misleading information about the compatibility status of third party extensions with newer versions of Joomla!. We strongly recommend that you simply ignore it, and base your decisions entirely on the guidance provided by extension developers like us. |
Support plan for Joomla 4
We will provide one (1) year of full support for Joomla! 4: October 17th, 2023 00:00:00 to October 16th, 2023 23:59:59 (dates and times expressed in the Eastern European Summer Time zone). During that time you will get security updates, bug fixes, new features, and full support for using Akeeba Backup 9 on Joomla! 4.4 and PHP versions up to and including PHP 8.2 only. We will not provide any support for using Akeeba Backup 9 on Joomla versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, or 4.3, nor will we provide support for using Akeeba Backup 9 on PHP versions 8.3 or later.
We will provide one (1) year of security updates for Joomla! 4: October 17th, 2024 00:00:00 to October 16th, 2025 23:59:59 (dates and times expressed in the Eastern European Summer Time zone). During that time you will only get security updates, and minimal support —only for the purpose of taking backups as part of your migration plan to Joomla! 5— for using Akeeba Backup 9 on Joomla! 4.4 and PHP versions up to and including PHP 8.2. We will not provide any bug fixes, or new features during that time.
Akeeba Backup 9 will become End of Life on October 17th, 2025 00:00:00 (dates and times expressed in the Eastern European Summer Time zone). From that point in time onwards we will provide no further updates to Akeeba Backup 9, not even security fixes, and no support for it and by extent for Joomla 4.
Upgrade plan from Joomla 5 to Joomla 6
The information below is subject to change. The technical feasibility and time frame of the intended actions depend on the development scheduled for Joomla 6. At the time of this writing (October 2023) this information is not known to us. We are operating on the assumption that Joomla's release plan will continue to be one new major version every 2 years which is backwards compatible to the previous major version, fully supported by the Joomla project for 3 years, and another year of security-only releases. If this plan changes, or if Joomla 6 introduces changes which make it impossible to provide a compatible version without another major rewrite, we reserve our right to revisit our release plan.
According to our current planning, Akeeba Backup 10 with support for Joomla 5 only will be released sometime between October and November 2024. Akeeba Backup 10 will get support for Joomla 6 during the testing period (alpha, beta, and release candidate versions) of Joomla 6 in Q3 2025. Assuming that Joomla does not renege, again, on its promises we will offer an Akeeba Backup 10 version which is compatible with both Joomla 5 and Joomla 6 before the release of Joomla 6 around October 17th, 2025.
We, therefore, urge our clients to plan their site migrations from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 to take place between October 2023 and October 2025, and their migrations from Joomla 5 to Joomla 6 to take place between October 2025 and October 2027. The earlier, the better.