Microsoft ends free upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 or 11

Microsoft says it will no longer be possible to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11 from the Windows 7 and 8 operating systems. The company said in 2015 that this free upgrade would only be offered for a year, but the upgrade was never disabled.

It company says removed the installation method to obtain the free upgrade. The German Deskmodder.de, which first wrote about the deprecation, says that in the current stable version of Windows 11 it is still possible to perform the free upgrade, but in the latest Canary Insider beta build this is no longer possible. The upgrade works by entering a Windows 7 or Windows 8 activation key when installing Windows 10 or 11, and Microsoft will automatically upgrade the key for free.

Microsoft announced the free upgrade in January 2015 with the aim of getting as many users as possible onto the then new Windows 10 operating system. At the time, the company said that upgrade would only be valid for one year, but the upgrade option continued after that year. At the beginning of 2020, the company indicated that it would not stop doing this for the time being. It is not clear why the company is stopping this now. It remains possible to upgrade Windows 10 to Windows 11 for free, Microsoft reports.