NetBSD 9.5 Released — and netbsd-9 Is Already End-of-Life
What shipped
NetBSD 9.5, announced September 6, 2026: the fifth and final patch release of the netbsd-9 stable branch, containing a curated set of security and stability fixes since 9.4 (which shipped April 20, 2024 — 863 days earlier). Fully compatible with NetBSD 9.0.
What changed
- 9.5 is the last one. NetBSD's formal release table lists both the release date and the end-of-support date for 9.5 as August 31, 2026. The branch it patches was declared dead the day it shipped; the announcement followed six days later.
- The death was on schedule. NetBSD's published policy: a major release goes unsupported one month after the second succeeding major release. NetBSD 11.0 shipped July 30, 2026 — 32 days later, netbsd-9 was EOL. Same script as 8.3, which hit end-of-life the day it shipped in May 2024.
- Branch math: 9.0 shipped February 14, 2020; EOL came August 31, 2026. That is 2,390 days and six releases (9.0 through 9.5) for the whole 9.x line.
- Named migration targets: NetBSD 11.0 (current), NetBSD 10.2 "in a few days," and NetBSD 11.1 by the end of September 2026.
Why a builder cares
If netbsd-9 is still running anywhere — an old VPS image, a CI pin, an appliance build — it stopped receiving security pullups on August 31, 2026. The announcement is fresh; the branch underneath it is not. Move to 11.0 now, or hold days for 10.2 if you need the 10.x series. Credit where due: NetBSD published its EOL rule, then executed it to the day — a deprecation you can actually plan against.