The December 2027 Deadline: What Actually Ends, and What Doesn't

There is also an earlier deadline that catches people off guard. If your ECC system is still running enhancement package 0 through 5, mainstream maintenance for that release already ended on December 31, 2025. Those systems moved automatically into what SAP calls customer-specific maintenance — a thinner tier that covers already-known issues but delivers no new legal updates or fixes at all. More than a few organizations are surprised to learn they crossed that line months ago, simply because nobody got around to applying a later enhancement package.

For everyone on EHP 6–8, SAP does offer a bridge: extended maintenance, running from January 1, 2028 through December 31, 2030, at a surcharge of roughly two additional percentage points on top of existing maintenance fees. For a company mid-migration, it can be the difference between finishing calmly and finishing in a panic. SAP has been explicit, though, that this is a bridge and not a destination — it must be elected in advance, and organizations are advised to complete that paperwork by Q3 2027, ahead of the mainstream deadline itself.

What happens after 2030 is the part that deserves real attention. There is no further extended tier. What remains is customer-specific maintenance, permanently: the same price as standard support, none of its scope. No new legal change packages, no new security patches for vulnerabilities discovered after that point, no guaranteed response times. It is support in name only, structured to be uncomfortable enough that almost nobody chooses it as a destination rather than a last resort.