Drupal ships as major versions — 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 — and the number matters because it decides one thing above all: whether security fixes still arrive. A supported version gets coordinated security releases from the Drupal security team. An end-of-life version gets nothing, forever, no matter how serious the hole.
The map, as of this review
| Version | Status | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Drupal 7 | End of life (Jan 2025) | No security releases. Every month is borrowed time. |
| Drupal 8 | End of life (Nov 2021) | Same — and the jump to 10/11 is gentler than from 7. |
| Drupal 9 | End of life (Nov 2023) | Same again; the move up is mostly housekeeping. |
| Drupal 10 | Supported, EOL Dec 2026 | Fine today; plan the 11 move this year. |
| Drupal 11 | Current | Where new work lands. |
Why 7 → anything is a bigger deal than 9 → 11
Drupal 8 rebuilt the foundations — field storage, configuration, templating — so crossing from 7 means a real migration: content moves via the Migrate API, and the theme and custom code are rebuilt. From 8, 9, or 10, upgrades are incremental: mostly module compatibility and deprecated API cleanup. Same word, very different projects.
The honest rule of thumb
If your site runs 7, 8, or 9: the question isn’t whether to move, it’s what order to do things in — usually stabilize first, then assess, then migrate. If you’re on 10: schedule the 11 move before December. If you don’t know what you’re running, the three-query check takes ten minutes, or an assessment answers it with a written report.