Retiring Unpopular Versions
August 26, 2026
by Caoimhe
Impact of supporting 30+ Minecraft versions
Essential supports a wide range of Minecraft versions across Fabric, Forge, and NeoForge, from 1.8.9 to the latest version of Minecraft.
This wide range of support allows you to enjoy Essential’s features on over 32 different Minecraft versions, but it also means that every change we make has to be built and tested more than 30 times. This slows down our development process, and prevents us from delivering new and meaningful features.
Retiring the most unpopular Minecraft versions
Because of this, we’re making the decision to retire support for the least-used versions of Minecraft. The vast majority of people will not be affected by this change.
This will happen with the release of Essential 1.5 in the coming weeks. It means that:
Essential will no longer receive updates on versions that have been retired.
Essential may continue to work on these retired versions, but we cannot guarantee it. These versions may stop connecting to the Essential network at any time.
We will not provide support or accept bug reports for issues that occur on a retired version of Essential.
The table below shows the versions of Essential that we will continue to support (✅), the versions that we will be retiring (⛔), and the versions that we are currently working on adding support for (🚧).
Version | Fabric | Forge | NeoForge |
26.2 | ✅ | 🚧 | 🚧 |
26.1.2 | ✅ | 🚧 | 🚧 |
26.1.1 | ✅ | ||
26.1 | ✅ | ||
1.21.11 | ✅ | 🚧 | 🚧 |
1.21.10 | ✅ | ||
1.21.9 | ⛔ | ||
1.21.8 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
1.21.7 | ⛔ | ⛔ | ⛔ |
1.21.6 | ⛔ | ||
1.21.5 | ⛔ | ⛔ | ⛔ |
1.21.4 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
1.21.3 | ⛔ | ⛔ | ⛔ |
1.21.2 | ⛔ | ||
1.21.1 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
1.21 | ⛔ | ||
1.20.6 | ⛔ | ⛔ | ⛔ |
1.20.4 | ⛔ | ⛔ | ⛔ |
1.20.2 | ⛔ | ⛔ | |
1.20.1 | ✅ | ✅ | |
1.20 | ⛔ | ||
1.19.4 | ⛔ | ⛔ | |
1.19.3 | ⛔ | ⛔ | |
1.19.2 | ✅ | ✅ | |
1.19.1 | ⛔ | ||
1.19 | ⛔ | ||
1.18.2 | ✅ | ✅ | |
1.18.1 | ⛔ | ||
1.18 | ⛔ | ||
1.17.1 | ⛔ | ⛔ | |
1.16.5 | ✅ | ✅ | |
1.12.2 | ✅ | ✅ | |
1.8.9 | ✅ | ✅ |
Support for the latest Forge and NeoForge versions is coming soon.