In my earlier article “Official Announcement: QGIS 4.0 Delayed, Expected in February 2026”, when I introduced QGIS 4, I noted that because of the migration to Qt 6, 4.0 had been pushed from October 2025 to early 2026. At that time, the official plan set the first long-term support (LTR) release in the 4.x series as QGIS 4.2 in October 2026. QGIS 4.2 was released in July, and in my article “Latest QGIS Version 4.2 Released (The LTR Release of QGIS 4.x Is Coming Soon)”, I also wrote according to that schedule.
I had assumed that the LTR status of 4.2 would arrive as scheduled, but on October 3, during China's National Day holiday, the QGIS Project Steering Committee published an announcement: 4.2 will no longer be the LTR. Well, it has been delayed again.
Reasons for the Delay
According to the Project Steering Committee, the LTR release is the stable version recommended for enterprise users. In an August developer mailing list thread, Nyall Dawson argued that 4.2 still has a number of issues and is not mature enough to be released as an LTR. The main issues are:
- Layout stability is insufficient; QGIS can crash during certain operations in print layouts.
- Qt 6 removed Qt WebKit. The plan is to implement the same functionality with Qt WebEngine, but the target release is 4.4, so it cannot make it into 4.2.
- Plugin and production migration: plugins that depend on HTML rendering, such as DataPlotly, are currently unavailable on 4.2.
The project has announced that a new “LTR 4.x Blocker” label will be created, and developers are asked to tag LTR-blocking issues with it. QGIS 4.2 will continue to receive patches on its original schedule.
Expected LTR Release Date
According to the latest official roadmap, the target is currently QGIS 4.4.4 on March 5, 2027 (it seems the QGIS team also likes repeated numbers).
Following QGIS release tradition, a new LTR does not immediately replace the old LTR in installation repositories. It waits until the next regular release, and the corresponding point release is then moved into the long-term support repository. According to the version roadmap, the next version to enter the long-term support repository is QGIS 4.8.4 on October 29, 2027.
Current Status
The current LTR on the official download page is QGIS 3.44.15, while the latest stable release is QGIS 4.2.3, released on September 25. Pre-release packages for 4.4 are available for download and testing, and the official 4.4.0 is still scheduled for October 30.
I recommend that production environments continue to use QGIS 3.44 LTR for now.
Can you start migrating in everyday work? You can try. In my article “QGIS 4.2.3 Finally Fixes the Multilingual Bug: A Basically Usable QGIS 4.x Release”, I mentioned that some basic issues have been fixed. In addition, the Tianditu plugin was confirmed to work in 4.0.2. If your project does not use HTML layout items and does not depend on plugins such as DataPlotly, you can use 4.2.3 to test your project, confirm that plugins and data sources can load, and then decide whether to move away from 3.44.
PS: Always back up your original data before testing!!
Summary
Although QGIS updates have been delayed repeatedly, as an open-source project driven by passion and volunteer effort, I hope those who are still waiting can be a little more patient. As users, you can also actively participate in development. If you encounter issues, you can file them on GitHub. If you can write C++ or PyQGIS, you can also try to fix known QGIS issues and gain some development experience in the process.
References
- Release schedule changes for next QGIS LTR: https://blog.qgis.org/2026/10/03/release-schedule-changes-for-next-qgis-ltr/
- QGIS version roadmap: https://www.qgis.org/resources/roadmap/
- QGIS download page: https://www.qgis.org/download/
- 2025 QGIS 4.0 delay and LTR plans: https://blog.qgis.org/2025/10/07/update-on-qgis-4-0-release-schedule-and-ltr-plans/
- Developer mailing list, next 4.x LTR: https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2026-August/068481.html
- Discussion of layout group crash: https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2026-August/068488.html
- QEP 420, Restore print layout HTML item: https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/pull/377