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Spring Boot 3 is out of free support. Here's the safe upgrade path

Spring Boot 3.5 lost free security fixes on 30 June 2026. Skip 4.0, go straight to 4.1, and do it in two steps.

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Is your app still on Spring Boot 3? Then it's running without free security fixes.

What happened

Every Spring Boot minor version gets about 13 months of free (open-source) support, and a new minor ships every six months.

VersionReleasedFree support ends
3.5 (last of 3.x)May 202530 Jun 2026 (ended)
4.0Nov 202531 Dec 2026
4.1Jun 202631 Jul 2027

Paid commercial support for 3.5 runs until 2032, but for most teams the answer is to upgrade.

Don't stop at 4.0

4.0's free support ends this December. Go straight to 4.1.

What changes in Spring Boot 4

  • Java 17 is still the minimum, now with Spring Framework 7 and Jakarta EE 11 underneath.
  • Jackson 3 moves to a new package: com.fasterxml.jackson becomes tools.jackson.
  • The web starter is renamed: spring-boot-starter-web becomes spring-boot-starter-webmvc.
  • @MockBean is gone. Use @MockitoBean instead.
java
// Spring Boot 3
@MockBean
OrderService orderService;
 
// Spring Boot 4
@MockitoBean
OrderService orderService;

The safe path

  1. Move to the latest 3.5.x and fix every deprecation warning.
  2. Then jump to 4.1 and run your tests.

Sources

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