# UCCX End of Life: Two Bulletins, Two Different Dates > Cisco published two end-of-life bulletins for contact center 12.5 and 12.6. Which December 2026 date binds you depends on the license you hold. *Source: https://trybussolutions.com/uccx-end-of-life-dates/ · Trybus Solutions · Chattanooga, TN · 423-633-1817 · info@trybussolutions.com* - [Home](https://trybussolutions.com/) - Company[About us](https://trybussolutions.com/about-us/) - [Careers](https://trybussolutions.com/careers/) - Solutions[Collaboration](https://trybussolutions.com/collaboration-unified-communications/) - [Networking & Connectivity Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/networking-connectivity/) - [Cybersecurity Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/cybersecurity/) - [Cloud & Infrastructure](https://trybussolutions.com/cloud-and-infrastructure/) - [Governance, Risk & Compliance](https://trybussolutions.com/governance-risk-compliance/) - [Digital Workplace](https://trybussolutions.com/digital-workplace/) - Services[Implementation & Migration](https://trybussolutions.com/implementation-migration/) - [Managed Services & Support](https://trybussolutions.com/managed-services-and-support/) - [Trybus Connect](https://trybussolutions.com/trybus-connect/) - Industries[Enterprise](https://trybussolutions.com/enterprise/) - [Education](https://trybussolutions.com/education/) - [Healthcare](https://trybussolutions.com/healthcare/) - [Financial Services](https://trybussolutions.com/financial-services/) - [Retail](https://trybussolutions.com/retail/) - [Public Sector](https://trybussolutions.com/public-sector/) - [Tribal Organization](https://trybussolutions.com/tribal-organization/) - [Resources](https://trybussolutions.com/resources/) - [Partners](https://trybussolutions.com/partners/) - [Home](https://trybussolutions.com/) - Company[About us](https://trybussolutions.com/about-us/) - [Careers](https://trybussolutions.com/careers/) - Solutions[Collaboration](https://trybussolutions.com/collaboration-unified-communications/) - [Networking & Connectivity Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/networking-connectivity/) - [Cybersecurity Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/cybersecurity/) - [Cloud & Infrastructure](https://trybussolutions.com/cloud-and-infrastructure/) - [Governance, Risk & Compliance](https://trybussolutions.com/governance-risk-compliance/) - [Digital Workplace](https://trybussolutions.com/digital-workplace/) - Services[Implementation & Migration](https://trybussolutions.com/implementation-migration/) - [Managed Services & Support](https://trybussolutions.com/managed-services-and-support/) - [Trybus Connect](https://trybussolutions.com/trybus-connect/) - Industries[Enterprise](https://trybussolutions.com/enterprise/) - [Education](https://trybussolutions.com/education/) - [Healthcare](https://trybussolutions.com/healthcare/) - [Financial Services](https://trybussolutions.com/financial-services/) - [Retail](https://trybussolutions.com/retail/) - [Public Sector](https://trybussolutions.com/public-sector/) - [Tribal Organization](https://trybussolutions.com/tribal-organization/) - [Resources](https://trybussolutions.com/resources/) - [Partners](https://trybussolutions.com/partners/) - [Home](https://trybussolutions.com/) - [Company](https://trybussolutions.com/about-us/)[About us](https://trybussolutions.com/about-us/) - [Careers](https://trybussolutions.com/careers/) - Solutions[Collaboration & Unified Communications](https://trybussolutions.com/collaboration-unified-communications/) - [Networking & Connectivity Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/networking-connectivity/) - [Cybersecurity Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/cybersecurity/) - [Managed Services & Support](https://trybussolutions.com/managed-services-and-support/) - [Governance, Risk & Compliance Solutions](https://trybussolutions.com/governance-risk-compliance/) - [Cloud & Infrastructure](https://trybussolutions.com/cloud-and-infrastructure/) - [Digital Workplace](https://trybussolutions.com/digital-workplace/) - Services[Implementation & Migration](https://trybussolutions.com/implementation-migration/) - [Architecture & Solution Design](https://trybussolutions.com/architecture-solution-design/) - [Trybus Connect](https://trybussolutions.com/trybus-connect/) - [Trybus Hub](https://trybussolutions.com/trybus-hub/) - Industries[Enterprise](https://trybussolutions.com/enterprise/) - [Education](https://trybussolutions.com/education/) - [Healthcare](https://trybussolutions.com/healthcare/) - [Financial Services](https://trybussolutions.com/financial-services/) - [Retail](https://trybussolutions.com/retail/) - [Public Sector](https://trybussolutions.com/public-sector/) - [Tribal Organization](https://trybussolutions.com/tribal-organization/) - [Partners](https://trybussolutions.com/partners/) - [Resources](https://trybussolutions.com/resources/) - [Shop](https://shop.trybussolutions.com/) - [Contact Us](https://trybussolutions.com/contact-us/) - [Customer Portal](https://trybussolutions.myportallogin.com) - [Home](https://trybussolutions.com/) - [Resources](https://trybussolutions.com/resources/) - UCCX End of Life: Two Bulletins, Two Different Dates # UCCX End of Life: Two Bulletins, Two Different Dates September 6, 20268 min readContact Center If you have searched for UCCX end of life and come away with two different December 2026 answers, both of them are correct. Cisco published two end-of-life bulletins for the same product versions, on the same day, at web addresses that differ by a single character. They carry different milestone tables. Which date binds your organization depends on how you license the software, not on which version you are running. That distinction decides whether you have a deadline this year or next. It is worth getting right before anyone builds a budget around it. ## The UCCX End of Life Dates: Two Bulletins That Look Like One On 30 June 2025 Cisco announced end of life for Version 12.5 and 12.6 of the on-premises contact center applications: Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Packaged Contact Center Enterprise, Unified Contact Center Express and Customer Voice Portal. One bulletin covers the on-premises software and licenses, which is the perpetual and Software Service and Support path. The other covers the associated on-premises Flex subscriptions. Their URLs are identical except that the subscription bulletin carries a leading `v`. Search engines and vendor summaries frequently return one and not the other. | Milestone | Perpetual and SWSS | On-premises Flex subscription | |---|---|---| | End-of-life announcement | 30 June 2025 | 30 June 2025 | | End of sale | 31 December 2025 | 31 December 2025 | | Last ship date | 31 March 2026 | Not applicable | | End of software maintenance releases | 31 December 2026 | Not stated separately | | End of new service attachment | 31 December 2026 | Not stated separately | | End of change or renewal, subscription | Not applicable | **31 December 2026** | | End of service contract renewal | 31 December 2027 | Not applicable | | Last date of support | 31 December 2027 | 31 December 2027 | Both paths end on the same day. What differs is what you are able to do between now and then. ## What Each December 2026 Date Actually Permits Cisco defines these milestones inside the bulletins themselves. The definitions matter more than the labels. **End of change or renewal date, subscription** is defined as "the last date to Renew or Add to an existing subscription." If your contact center runs on an on-premises Flex subscription, 31 December 2026 is the last day you are able to renew it or add seats to it. The entitlement you already hold continues to 31 December 2027, but you cannot extend or grow it after this year. **End of software maintenance releases** is the last date Cisco engineering may release final software maintenance releases or bug fixes. After 31 December 2026 the code you are running is the code you keep. No further fixes are produced for 12.5 or 12.6, including security fixes. **End of new service attachment** is the last date to order a new service and support contract, or to add software that is not currently covered to an existing contract. If a cluster or a node is sitting outside your SWSS coverage today, this year is the last opportunity to bring it in. **End of service contract renewal**, which applies on the perpetual path only, runs to 31 December 2027. An existing, already-covered contract can be renewed for another term through that date. The practical summary: subscription customers lose the ability to renew at the end of this year. Perpetual customers keep that ability for a further twelve months, but lose bug fixes on the same December 2026 date as everyone else. ## If You Hold Perpetual UCCX Licenses, Support Has Already Ended There is a separate bulletin that catches organizations by surprise more often than either of the two above, because it is older and because its subject line reads like a commercial change rather than a support change. Cisco announced the end of life of perpetual licensing for Unified Contact Center Express on 31 January 2022, under the title "Replaced by Flex Contact Center." Its milestones have all passed: - End of sale: 1 August 2022 - End of new service attachment: 1 August 2022 - End of service contract renewal: 1 August 2023 - **Last date of support: 31 July 2024** Cisco's guidance in that bulletin is to "migrate from Cisco Contact Center perpetual licenses with Software Service and Support (SWSS) to equivalent entitlements available through Collaboration Flex Plan for Contact Center." If your UCCX seats are still carried on perpetual part numbers, the 12.5 and 12.6 dates discussed above are not the ones that apply to you. Support on those licenses ended over two years ago. Confirm which entitlement your seats actually sit on before planning against a 2026 or 2027 date. ## What the Upgrade to Version 15 Requires Both bulletins say the same thing about the destination, and they say very little: customers are encouraged to move to Version 15 or higher. Neither names an intermediate step or a per-product path. The detail is in the install and upgrade guide, and it is more restrictive than the bulletin suggests. The guide states that "you can upgrade to Unified CCX 15.0 only from Unified CCX versions 12.5(1), 12.5(1) SU1, 12.5(1) SU2, and 12.5(1) SU3." Anything older has to reach 12.5 first, which makes it a two-stage project rather than one maintenance window. Four requirements decide whether your existing environment can carry the upgrade at all: 1. **A key management COP file, installed before the upgrade begins.** From 12.5(1) it is `ucos.keymanagement.v01.cop.sgn`; from 12.5(1) SU1 or SU2 it is `ucos.keymanagement.v02.cop.sgn`. From SU3 no COP is required. FIPS-enabled systems need a further pre-upgrade COP. 2. **ESXi 7.0 or later.** The guide is explicit that the procedure is performed only on virtual machines running on ESXi host version 7.0 or later. An older host is a hypervisor project before it is a contact center project. 3. **More memory.** A 100 agent profile requires 16 GB of vRAM. A 400 agent profile requires 24 GB. This is a change from the 12.5 sizing, and on a consolidated host it may not be available without moving workloads. 4. **A guest operating system change.** The virtual machine's guest OS version has to be updated to match, to "Other 4.x or later Linux(64 bit)." Note that Cisco documents this as an in-place refresh upgrade, not a migration. The distinction matters when you are writing the change record and the rollback plan. ## Where This Goes Wrong Four failures account for most of the trouble we see on these projects. **Planning against the wrong bulletin.** A subscription customer who reads the perpetual bulletin believes renewal runs to the end of 2027. It does not. That is a twelve-month error in the direction that hurts, and it is usually discovered when a renewal is declined. **Treating end of software maintenance as a soft date.** It is the date the security fixes stop. For a contact center that records calls, holds payment card data in scope, or sits inside a regulated environment, running unpatched software is a finding waiting to be written up. Your auditor and your cyber insurer will reach that conclusion before your vendor does. **Assuming the upgrade is a maintenance window.** If the cluster is older than 12.5(1), or the host is on ESXi 6.x, or the memory is not there, the upgrade cannot proceed on the night it is scheduled. These are discovered late because nobody checks the hypervisor when the project is described as a software upgrade. **Deciding the platform before scoping the environment.** The routing logic, the integrations behind the screen pop, the recording retention rules and the reporting nobody wants to lose are what make a contact center project long. None of them appear in an agent count. We have written separately on [what a contact center assessment has to establish before a platform is chosen](https://trybussolutions.com/what-to-scope-before-choosing-a-contact-center/), and the sequence in that piece applies whether the destination is Version 15 or a cloud platform. ## The Decision, and the Order to Take It In There are three viable paths and they are not equally available to everyone. Staying on-premises means upgrading to Version 15 and accepting the hypervisor, memory and staging work described above. Moving to a cloud contact center platform means a migration project with a different shape, where routing and integrations are rebuilt rather than carried. Doing nothing means running unsupported software from 1 January 2028, with no fixes from the end of this year. Whichever you choose, take the steps in this order: 1. Establish which bulletin applies to you by identifying the part numbers your seats are licensed on, not the version you are running. 2. If you are on an on-premises Flex subscription, decide before 31 December 2026 whether you are renewing, because after that date you cannot. 3. Check your current version, host ESXi version and available memory against the Version 15 requirements, and record which of them you fail today. 4. Document the routing, integrations, recording retention and reporting you rely on, before any platform is proposed. 5. Then choose, with the constraints already written down rather than discovered mid-project. Trybus Solutions works on both destinations. We design and run [collaboration and contact center environments](https://trybussolutions.com/collaboration-unified-communications/) on-premises and in the cloud, and we provide [managed services and support](https://trybussolutions.com/managed-services-and-support/) for the result. ## Common questions **Does the contact center stop working on 31 December 2026?** No. The last date of support for both licensing paths is 31 December 2027. What stops at the end of 2026 is the production of software maintenance releases and bug fixes, along with the ability to renew or add to an on-premises Flex subscription. **We are on UCCX 12.5. Do we have to go to 12.6 first?** No. The install and upgrade guide permits a direct upgrade to 15.0 from 12.5(1) and its service updates SU1, SU2 and SU3. Versions older than 12.5 must reach 12.5 first. **How do we tell whether we are on perpetual or subscription licensing?** The part numbers on your entitlement records identify it. Perpetual UCCX seat licenses use the `CCX-` prefix and were end-of-sale on 1 August 2022. Flex Contact Center entitlements are carried on the Collaboration Flex Plan agreement. If the records are unclear, your Cisco partner is able to read the entitlement directly. **Is Version 15 a long-term destination?** Cisco has published no end-of-life bulletin for Version 15 at the time of writing. That is not the same as a commitment to a support horizon, and the on-premises path should be planned with a refresh cycle in mind. ## Sources - [Cisco - End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for Version 12.5/12.6 On-Premises Contact Center applications and associated On-Premises software and licenses](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/cisco-collaboration-flex-plan/12-5-12-6-ucce-pcce-uccx-cvp-eol.html) - [Cisco - End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for Version 12.5/12.6 On-Premises Contact Center applications and associated On-Premises Flex Subscriptions](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/unified-communications/cisco-collaboration-flex-plan/v12-5-12-6-ucce-pcce-uccx-cvp-eol.html) - [Cisco - End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Perpetual Licensing for Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, Replaced by Flex Contact Center](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/contact-center/unified-contact-center-express/unified-contact-center-express-eol.html) - [Cisco - Unified CCX Install and Upgrade Guide, Release 15.0, Upgrade chapter](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/crs/express_15_0/install/guide/uccx_b_150_install-and-upgrade-guide/uccx_m_150_unified-ccx-upgrade.html) - [Cisco - End-of-Life Policy](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/eos-eol-policy.html) ## Keep reading - [Contact CenterContact Center Migration: What to Scope First9 min read](https://trybussolutions.com/what-to-scope-before-choosing-a-contact-center/) - [CallingCUCM to Webex Calling Migration10 min read](https://trybussolutions.com/cucm-to-webex-calling-migration/) - [CallingCloud Calling Migration9 min read](https://trybussolutions.com/cloud-calling-migration/) ## Find out which date applies to you Trybus Solutions reads the entitlement, checks the version, host and memory against the Version 15 requirements, and gives you the constraints in writing before a platform is proposed. Or call [423-633-1817](tel:+14236331817) · [info@trybussolutions.com](mailto:info@trybussolutions.com)