Upgrade Path from 9.9.2 Community LTS — Which Path Should We Take?

Hi Sonar Community,

We’re currently running SonarQube Community Edition 9.9.2 (LTS) using the .zip installation on a Linux server.

We recently saw the deprecation warning that 9.9.x is past end of life, and we’re preparing to upgrade. Based on the updated documentation, the upgrade path appears to be:

9.9 LTA → 24.12.0.100206 → 25.4.0.x
(with one mandatory intermediate step)

We wanted to confirm a few things before proceeding:

  1. Is this the correct upgrade path for the Community Edition using the .zip method?
  2. If we prefer a more stable, longer-supported version, can we instead upgrade to Long-Term Active (LTA) version like 2025.1 LTA? Or is it better to just follow the current path to 25.4?

Appreciate any guidance before we begin the upgrade process.

Thanks!

Hi,

First, please check this blog post: A better (free) SonarQube experience

For Community Build:

  • Switched to calendar versioning in Dec 2024, there are no more LTA releases for Community.
  • New versions are released monthly, named as <short year>.<month> (e.g., 25.7). Only the latest release is supported.
  • Rule of thumb: If your source and target versions are in different calendar years, you must upgrade to the December (xx.12) build of the intervening year before moving to the next year’s version.

So, the upgrade path is:
9.9 → 24.12 → 25.7

For Commercial editions:

  • Version format is <full year>.<release number> (e.g., 2025.3).
  • The first release of the year (xxxx.1) is considered LTA.
  • Once you’re on the current LTA for the year, you can jump to the latest non-LTA release within that year.

So, the upgrade path is:
9.9 LTA → 2025.1.x LTA → 2025.3.x (latest, non-LTA)