Wagtail LTS: which version should your website run in 2026?

The short answer: for a business website, install or keep the current Wagtail LTS release, 7.4, published on 5 May 2026 and maintained until 2 November 2027. A site still running 6.3 LTS has not received a single security fix since 1 May 2026: upgrading it is an emergency, not a nicety. The dates below come from the official release schedule and the release notes, checked on 18 September 2026.

What does LTS mean for your website?

Wagtail ships a new version every three months. Most are maintained for only a few months: until the next one comes out, plus a grace period for security fixes. One version in four is marked LTS, for long-term support: it receives security and data-loss fixes for about eighteen months, until the next LTS. One LTS ships every year, in May since 2025.

For you, the consequence is simple. A site on an LTS release is upgraded once a year, from LTS to LTS, without chasing every release. A site on an intermediate release has to be upgraded every three months, or it runs without fixes. It is the first thing to check when you take over a Wagtail site or choose a provider.

The 2025-2027 calendar

7.0 LTS remains covered until 2 November 2026: a site running it has until the autumn to move to 7.4. 6.3 LTS left support on 1 May 2026.

What 7.4 LTS brings

Since 7.0 LTS, three changes matter for a team that publishes every day.

• Autosave (7.3): the editor saves pages and content as you type, and warns when two people edit the same page. No more lost drafts.
• Incomplete drafts (7.0, refined in 7.4): a page saves as a draft even when required fields are empty; validation only happens on publish.
• Lighter images (7.3): the default compression settings were revised, with markedly smaller files at the same quality. The project measured images 40% lighter in its 2025 carbon footprint report.

7.4 requires Django 5.2 at least, itself under long-term support until April 2028 (Django calendar). A stable pair for eighteen months.

What about 8.0?

8.0, released on 25 August 2026, is a short release, not an LTS. It brings a writable interface that lets a program, or an AI agent, create, edit and publish content with the same rights as a user, a base page model the developer can customise from the start, and AVIF and WEBP image formats by default (official announcement). It requires updating some third-party extensions. For a business website with no immediate need for those features, 7.4 LTS remains the right choice until the next LTS, expected in 2027.

What if your site runs an old version?

A well-built Wagtail site is upgraded from version to version, without a rewrite: releases follow one another as upgrades, never as a switch. What lengthens the work is abandoned third-party extensions, custom code that uses removed features, and above all skipped versions: going from 6.3 to 7.4 is done in steps, LTS by LTS (6.3, then 7.0, then 7.4), each with its migration notes.

• Ask your provider for the exact Wagtail and Django versions in production, and the date of the last upgrade.
• If the version is no longer maintained (6.3 or earlier, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3), plan the move to 7.4 LTS before any other change.
• Budget one upgrade a year, at each LTS release, in the maintenance contract. A planned upgrade costs less than an emergency one.

This is what we do for the sites we host and maintain: every site follows the current LTS, the upgrade is planned with the client and tested on a copy of the site before going to production. If you inherit a Wagtail site whose version nobody knows, describe the situation to us: a version audit takes an hour.

Further reading

• Wagtail vs WordPress: whichCMS for your professional website?
• Is Wagtail secure?
• Ten years of Wagtail: our experience