To ensure our hosted agents in Azure Pipelines are operating in the most secure and up-to-date environments, we continuously update the supported images and phase out older ones. In October 2024, we announced support for Ubuntu-24.04. Soon, we plan to update the ubuntu-latest image to map to Ubuntu-24.04. Additionally, MacOS 15 Sequoia and Windows 2025 images will be generally available later this year. Alongside these new releases, we will deprecate older images like Ubuntu-20.04 and Windows Server 2019. Please refer to the following subsections for detailed updates on individual images.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu 24.04
General Availability of Ubuntu 24.04
The Ubuntu-24.04 Pipelines image is available since October last year. We plan to update the ubuntu-latest image to map to Ubuntu-24.04 soon. After this change all the jobs using ubuntu-latest image will run on ubuntu-24.04 instead of ubuntu-22.04. Please note that some tools are no longer available on the Ubuntu-24.04 image.
Ubuntu 20.04
Deprecation plan for Ubuntu-20.04
We are deprecating support for the Ubuntu 20.04 image in Azure Pipelines because it will reach its end of support soon. Please find the deprecation plan for the same below.
Key Dates:
• Deprecation Start Date: March 19, 2025
• Brownout period: 19th March 2025 to 28th March 2025
• Full Removal Date: April 30th, 2025
What This Means for You:
Starting from March 18, 2025, organization using the Ubuntu 20.04 image will begin to see a banner indicating the upcoming deprecation. To raise awareness about the upcoming deprecation we will temporarily fail the jobs (brownout) that are using Ubuntu 20.04 from March 19th 2025 to April 8th 2025. From April 30, 2025, the Ubuntu 20.04 image will be fully removed from our hosted agents, and any pipelines still using this image will fail to run.
Brownout schedule
19th March 2025: 21:00 – 5:00 UTC
21st March 2025: 5:00 – 13:00 UTC
25th March 2025: 13:00 – 21:00 UTC
26th March 2025: 21:00 – 5:00 UTC
28th March 2025: 5:00 – 13:00 UTC
1st April 2025: 13:00 – 21:00 UTC
8th April 2025: 13:00 – 21:00 UTC
Recommended Actions:
To avoid disruptions, we recommend updating your pipelines to use the Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 image as soon as possible. The updated Ubuntu images offer improved performance, security, and support for the latest tools and libraries.
How to find out the impacted pipelines
To find out the impacted pipelines that are using the deprecated images please run the script present here.
You can also identify pipelines that are using a deprecated (e.g. ubuntu-20.04) image, by checking the following location: https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_settings/agentqueues
Select the ‘Azure Pipelines’ pool, then, filter on the image name, refer the following snapshot.
How to Update Your Pipelines:
1. Open your pipeline YAML file.
2. Locate the vmImage property.
3. Change the value from ubuntu-20.04 to ubuntu-22.04 (ubuntu-24.04, ubuntu-latest).
4. Save and run your pipeline to ensure it works with the new image.
Example:
pool:
vmImage: 'ubuntu-22.04'
pool:
vmImage: 'ubuntu-24.04'
pool:
vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'
Alternate methods to use Ubuntu 20.04 in Pipeline Jobs
Customers that are still dependent on Ubuntu 20.04 even when it reaches its end of support state, have the following options to Use Ubuntu 20.04 in a pipeline:
Using a Container job allow you to specify a container image independently of the hosted pipeline image. For example:
jobs:
- job: ubuntu20
container: ubuntu:20.04
displayName: Use Ubuntu 20.04 container image
pool:
vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'
steps:
- script: printenv
With Managed DevOps Pools, you can create an agent pool using the ubuntu-20.04 Azure Pipelines image until June 30. You can also use images from the Azure Marketplace.
Lastly, you can create a Self-hosted agent using any Operating System supported by the Pipelines Agent.
Windows
Windows Server 2025
The Windows Server 2025 image will be generally available starting June 16, 2025. Please be aware that starting from September 2, 2025, the “windows-latest” label will refer to Windows 2025 instead of windows-2022. Customers using windows-latest will receive a warning in their jobs to notify them about this change.
Windows Server 2019
As Windows Server 2025 generally available now, we will initiate the deprecation of the Windows Server 2019 as Microsoft Hosted Agent image in Azure Pipelines. We recommend that if you use Windows Server 2019 image in a Microsoft Hosted Agent, you switch to Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server 2025 image.
Important
Please note that support for Windows Server 2019 image for Microsoft hosted Agents has been extended till 31st December’2025. We will have additional brownout on 2nd December’2025 and 9th December’2025 to raise awareness about the upcoming retiral.
Who is impacted
This deprecation affects Azure DevOps Pipeline customers only if they are using Windows Server 2019 image in a Microsoft Hosted Agent. Please note that it does not impact customers using Windows 2019 in any other Agent (Self-hosted, MDP, VMSS). Refer the guidelines given below to find out the impacted pipelines in your organization. The detailed deprecation plan is outlined below.
Key Dates:
• Deprecation Start Date: 1st June 2025
• Brownout period: 3rd June 2025 to 24th June 2025, 2nd December 2025 to 9th December 2025
• Full Removal Date: 30th June 2025 31st December 2025
What This Means for You:
In the coming weeks, organizations will begin to see a banner indicating the upcoming deprecation of Windows Server 2019 hosted image. To further raise awareness, we will temporarily fail the jobs (brownout) that are using Windows Server 2019 images from 3rd June 2025 to 24th June 2025. From 1st January 2026 onwards, the Windows Server 2019 image will be fully removed from our hosted agents, and any pipeline jobs still using this image will fail to run. We recommend that our customers using Windows Server 2019 images in their pipeline jobs switch to Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server 2025 images.
Brownout schedule
• June 3 13:00-21:00 UTC
• June 10 13:00-21:00 UTC
• June 17 13:00-21:00 UTC
• June 24 13:00-21:00 UTC
• December 2 13:00-21:00 UTC
• December 9 13:00-21:00 UTC
How to find out the impacted pipelines
To find out the impacted pipelines that are using the deprecated images please run the script present here. You can also identify pipelines that are using a deprecated (e.g. Windows 2019) image, by checking the following location: https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_settings/agentqueues
Select the ‘Azure Pipelines’ pool, then, filter on the image name, refer the following snapshot. 
Recommended Actions:
To avoid disruptions, we recommend updating your impacted pipelines to use the Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server 2025 image as soon as possible.
How to Update Your Pipelines:
- Open your pipeline YAML file.
- Locate the vmImage property.
- Change the value from windows-2019 to windows-2022 or windows-2025 or windows-latest.
- Save and run your pipeline to ensure it works with the new image.
Example:
pool:
vmImage: 'windows-2022'
pool:
vmImage: 'windows-2025'
pool:
vmImage: 'windows-latest'
mac-OS
mac-OS Sequoia
mac-OS 15 sequoia image is generally available now. Please note that “macOS-latest” will now point to macOS 15 instead of macOS 14.
mac-OS 13 Ventura
In accordance with our policy to support the n-1 version of OS images, we will initiate the deprecation of macOS 13 Ventura starting 1st September 2025, with plans to retire it by 4th December 2025. Customers currently utilizing macOS-13 in their pipelines are encouraged to transition to macOS-14 or macOS-15 images.
Who is impacted
This deprecation affects Azure DevOps Pipeline customers only if they are using macOS 13 image in a Microsoft Hosted Agent. Please note that it does not impact customers using macOS13 images in any other Agent (Self-hosted, MDP, VMSS). Refer the guidelines given below to find out the impacted pipelines in your organization. The detailed deprecation plan is outlined below.
Key Dates:
• Deprecation Start Date: 1st September 2025
• Weekly Brownout Period: 4th Nov-25th Nov 2025
• Full Retiral Date: 4th December 2025
Brownout schedule
• November 4, 14:00 UTC to November 5, 00:00 UTC
• November 11, 14:00 UTC to November 12, 00:00 UTC
• November 18, 14:00 UTC to November 19, 00:00 UTC
• November 25, 14:00 UTC to November 26, 00:00 UTC
How to find out the impacted pipelines
To find out the impacted pipelines that are using the deprecated images please run the script present here. You can also identify pipelines that are using a deprecated (e.g. macOS-13) image, by checking the following location: https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_settings/agentqueues
Select the ‘Azure Pipelines’ pool, then, filter on the image name i.e. macOS-13.
How to Update Your Pipelines:
- Open your pipeline YAML file.
- Locate the vmImage property.
- Change the value from macOS-13 to macOS-14 or macOS-15 or macOS-latest.
- Save and run your pipeline to ensure it works with the new image.
Example:
pool:
vmImage: 'macOS-14'
pool:
vmImage: 'macOS-15'
pool:
vmImage: 'macOS-latest'
Apple silicon (ARM64) support for mac-OS image
We understand that there has been significant anticipation for Apple Silicon(ARM64) support in macOS images. We are pleased to inform you that we are currently conducting a private preview. Thank you for the enthusiastic response to the private preview and for sharing your feedback about your experience with the image. As we approach the public preview release, we are closing new registrations for the private preview.
We understand that some of these changes may require some adjustments to your pipelines, and we are here to help. If you have any questions or need assistance, please reach out to our support team or visit our community forums.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we continue to improve the Azure Pipelines experience.
Hello Team,
Is there any public preview date (or just an approximate timeline) for MacOS ARM64 hosted agents?
We are currently evaluating Azure DevOps against other platforms such as GitLab for our CI/CD tooling, and the availability of MacOS ARM64 agents is critical for our mobile build pipelines. Since we are already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, we would prefer to continue with Azure DevOps, but the lack of Apple Silicon–based hosted agents is becoming a blocker for our rollout.
If you could share even an indicative timeline, it would greatly help us plan our adoption strategy.
Hi Amal,
We expect to announce the Public Preview of MacOS ARM64 hosted agents in the coming weeks. Please lookout for the formal announcement on the same.
Hi,
In our pipeline we are currently using the following setting:
name: defaultVmImage
value: ‘Windows-latest’
However, our pipeline failed yesterday with the following error:
Windows Server 2019 has been retired. The Windows Server 2019 image has been removed as of 2025-06-30.
Do we need to update the defaultVmImage value to windows-2022 to resolve this issue or was the problem caused by a change on Microsoft’s side?
Hi Abhishek, please raise a service ticket if you are still seeing any failure or warning specific to windows-2019 images.
Just checking… I’m using the macos 13 image self-hosted. DevOps itself is giving me a warning about my current pool, but the above says self-hosted isn’t affected?
Hi Reuben, Self-hosted agents should not receive this warning. If you notice macOS-13 retirement warnings in your pipeline, please submit a support ticket.
Any information when we can start building .NET10 applications with Azure DevOps Service? The windows-latest image doesn’t contain VS2026, so our pipeline fails now when our projects are upgraded to .NET10
We had the same question – and would like the .net 10 SDK added to the base image for windows 2025.
In case it helps you out Mikael, you can get around this by installing the SDK as a step in your build pipeline as follows:
- task: UseDotNet@2 inputs: packageType: 'sdk' version: '10.0.x'If you need a specific workload, then you can use something like this (after the prior step):
- task: DotNetCoreCLI@2 displayName: 'Install .NET MAUI Workload' inputs: command: 'custom' custom: 'workload' arguments: 'install maui'Hi Mikael windows-latest image will be updated to include VS2026 soon. Please look out for an update on the same here
Hi , does this apply for MMS images (https://eng.ms/docs/cloud-ai-platform/devdiv/one-engineering-system-1es/1es-docs/1es-hosted-azure-devops-pools/mms-images) too?
thanks
Is there an alternate where we don’t have to own the maintenance or update the version every time there is an update.
I see some options like ‘windows-latest’ and ‘ubuntu-latest’. Will that do the job?
You can use windows-latest or ubuntu-latest, which will always point to the latest release of the respective operating system.
We’re seeing this on our release pipelines, not just on our build pipelines. Those are edited in a GUI-editor, not yaml (at least I have not found a way to show yaml for them) – and I am struggeling with finding the setting for VM image here.
We (finally) found out that we can select a deploy pipeline VM within the GUI-editor, by selecting the gray “Run on agent” node in our stages. None of us remembered that this thing existed. Not the easiest to find. I think it would be good to update the instructions with this.
If we also had a way to edit the release pipelines in a yaml file or similar, this would also be a lot easier – but just finding the setting helps a lot.
Thanks for pointing it out. As suggested in the below comment from David, we will be adding the steps to edit the image for the classic editor as well.
This post isn't too well explained IMO, and the number of down votes supports my initial terror that Windows 2019 as a web-hosting environment is being stopped at short notice (yes we are migrating anyway, but its a slow process).
For many people who are pushing to web apps hosted on Server 2019, it is possible to continue this without issue just by changing the agent version in the pipeline settings.
Note that for me, updating the YAML to was not enough, there was an extra step needed (and I have no idea why DevOps was ever configured this way...
These are the steps outlined for classic editor. We will add that to the blog, thanks for your suggestions.
Hi, I am using self hosted windows server 2019 and not Azure hosted VM.
Will we be impacted here?
No, customers using Self hosted Agents are not impacted.
@shubham Agarwal, Pipelines that we changed to use Windows-Latest during the burnout window are failing today. If we switch them back to Windows-2019, they work fine. We are experiencing issues with Windows-Latest, Windows-2025, and Windows-2022.
This is unexpected behaviour, please raise an issue with the support team.