Cisco End-of-Support 2026: What’s Reaching Its Date and What to Do About It

2026 is an unusually heavy end-of-support year across the Cisco and Meraki portfolio, and the difference between an expensive scramble and an orderly refresh comes down to three things: knowing exactly what is on your network, knowing which milestone date actually matters for each platform, and choosing the right response for each one, replace, extend, or accept the risk. End-of-support is not a buying deadline the vendor invented. It is a risk transfer: on each milestone date, a specific piece of security, compliance, and operational risk moves off the vendor and onto you. This page is the planning instrument for that. It starts with the Meraki families reaching their dates in 2026 and 2027, where most mid-market networks are concentrated, and expands across the wider Cisco portfolio as each family is verified.

If you are not yet clear on what the milestone dates on a notice actually mean, read End of Sale vs End of Support first, then come back here for the planning view.

What Meraki equipment reaches end of support in 2026 and 2027?

A broad cross-section of the Meraki lineup reaches its dates in this window: switches (MS210 and MS225), a large batch of access points, several MX security appliances, older MV cameras, the Meraki Go line, and virtual MX. The tables below are the working master list, grouped by the milestone that lands in the window, and verified against the canonical Meraki end-of-life page and the per-product notices. Cisco switching, routing, and firewall families are being verified and will be added.

Reaching End-of-Sale in 2026 (stop buying, plan the replacement)

Reaching End-of-Support in 2026 (most urgent: off the network or accept the risk this year)

Reaching End-of-Support in 2027 (next year’s cliff)

Three things in this table are worth knowing before you plan. The MT sensor line has no replacement at this time, so if you run MT sensors, the plan is not a swap, it is a decision about whether to keep them running unsupported or retire the capability. Meraki Go (the GX and GR lines) runs a roughly two-year support window, not the usual five, so that gear ages out faster than the rest of the estate. And the high-density access point paths (the CW9178I successors) require RF and design validation, they are not clean like-for-like swaps, so budget design time, not just hardware.

How do Meraki’s end-of-life milestones actually work?

Meraki runs its own end-of-life policy, separate from the general Cisco policy. Two dates matter. End-of-Sale is when you can no longer buy the product. End-of-Support (EOST) is the last date the product is affirmatively supported, and it typically falls five years after End-of-Sale (the Meraki Go line is the exception at about two years). So for Meraki gear, the date that drives your risk is the End-of-Support date. After it, the hardware keeps running, but it is no longer supported.

For general Cisco hardware (the switching, routing, and firewall families being added to this page), the milestone framework is different and a little more layered. The full explanation of End of Sale, the support windows that step down from it, and the Last Date of Support is in the End of Sale vs End of Support guide, and the underlying policy is Cisco’s End-of-Life Policy. The short version that applies to planning: the headline final date is rarely the date that should drive your refresh. The support that steps down earlier is.

Why are so many products reaching end of support in 2026?

Because product generations launched in the same window tend to age out of support together, and an unusually large cohort reaches its milestones this cycle. The vendor push is real and rational, it is not manufactured urgency, it is the lifecycle catching up with a big installed base at once. A measured response on your side is just as rational: the volume is real, and it is exactly the kind of thing you can plan around rather than react to item by item. The teams that inventory early and sequence deliberately spend far less than the ones that get surprised one notice at a time.

What should you do if your hardware is reaching its date?

Every affected platform gets one of three responses. The right choice depends on what the gear does, how exposed it is, and which milestone it has actually reached.

Replace when the platform is in your core, carries security or compliance sensitive traffic, or its support has already stepped down. The goal is not to buy fast, it is to buy on your budget cycle instead of the vendor’s calendar. Extend when a successor is chosen but not yet due and you want deliberate runway, leaning on support coverage that is still available and a spares strategy. Be honest about the limit: extension buys time, it does not remove risk, and it has a hard expiry. Accept the risk when the gear is isolated, non-critical, or already scheduled for decommission. Naming this option openly is the honest part, not every box needs replacing on the vendor’s schedule, and the one condition is that “isolated” has to be true.

Should you replace end-of-life gear or keep running it?

It depends on which milestone the platform has reached and what the gear does. If it is past its support date and sits anywhere near your core or regulated data, replacing it is usually the right call, the exposure compounds and there is no recovery path when it fails. If it is isolated, non-critical, or heading for decommission anyway, keeping it running can be entirely defensible. What you should not do is decide from the headline date alone. Run each platform through the replace, extend, or accept framework rather than treating “end of life” as a single verdict.

How the triage works: a worked example

A mid-market company with a dozen sites runs an inventory and finds gear across three families reaching milestones inside the next eighteen months: a batch of older access points at end-of-support this year, a set of MX security appliances a year out, and a handful of Meraki Go units on an isolated segment. Rather than treat it as one emergency, they triage by bucket. The access points are core and their support ends first, so they go into the current budget cycle, back-planned so the replacements are deployed before support ends. The MX appliances have a clear successor and coverage still available, so they extend twelve months and schedule the swap for the next cycle. The Go units are isolated and slated for decommission, so they confirm the isolation, document the decision, and spend nothing replacing gear that is leaving anyway. Same eighteen-month window, three different answers, and a spend profile spread across budget cycles instead of hitting all at once.

How do you plan a refresh on your budget cycle instead of the vendor’s?

You back-plan from the real trigger, not the headline date. For Meraki gear the trigger is the End-of-Support date. For general Cisco hardware it is usually the point where support steps down after End of Sale, which is often earlier than the final date. Start from that trigger and subtract honest lead times: procurement and approvals, hardware availability (and for high-density wireless, RF and design validation), staging, and a phased cutover across every site the platform touches. Whatever budget cycle that math lands in is the one the purchase belongs in. Waiting for the final support date to force the decision is planning to fail.

You can’t decide what you don’t inventory

Every decision on this page assumes you know what is actually deployed and where each piece sits in its lifecycle, and most mid-market, multi-site teams do not have that picture accurately. Gear drifts across sites, spreadsheets go stale, and the platform you think is retired is still passing traffic at a branch. A Stratus Secure Network Assessment inventories your estate and maps its end-of-support exposure, which is the starting line for the triage above rather than the finish.

What to do about it

1. Inventory first. Get an accurate picture of every platform deployed and where each sits in its lifecycle.
2. Identify the real trigger per platform (the End-of-Support date for Meraki; the step-down after End of Sale for general Cisco), not just the headline date.
3. Sort each affected platform into replace, extend, or accept risk.
4. Sequence the spend by back-planning each replacement onto the budget cycle that lands new gear before its trigger. Include design time for high-density wireless.
5. Re-check regularly. This list moves as the vendor publishes new notices, and so does your exposure.

Not sure what is reaching its date across your network? Send us your Bill of Materials and request a free quote. We will map your Cisco and Meraki estate against current dates and lay out the replace, extend, or accept options per platform.

Frequently asked questions

What Cisco equipment reaches end of support in 2026? A broad set of Meraki families reach their dates in 2026 and 2027, including MS210 and MS225 switches, a large batch of MR access points, several MX security appliances, older MV cameras, the Meraki Go line, and virtual MX. The current families and dates are in the master table on this page, verified against the vendor’s published notices and updated as new ones publish. Cisco switching, routing, and firewall families are being added.

What should I do if my Cisco hardware is end of support? Run each affected platform through three options, replace, extend, or accept the risk, based on what the gear does and which milestone it has reached. Replace core or security-exposed gear whose support has stepped down; extend when a successor is planned and coverage is still available; accept the risk only for isolated, non-critical, or soon-to-be-decommissioned units.

Should I replace Cisco equipment that’s end of life or keep running it? Replace it if its support has ended and it sits near your core or regulated data, because the exposure compounds and there is no recovery path on failure. Keeping it running is defensible for isolated, non-critical, or decommission-bound gear. Decide from the specific milestone the platform has reached, not the headline end-of-life date.

Sources

• Meraki End-of-Life Products and Dates (master list): https://documentation.meraki.com/Platform_Management/Product_Information/End-of-Life_Notices/Meraki_End-of-Life_(EOL)_Products_and_Dates
• Meraki End-of-Life Policy: https://meraki.cisco.com/meraki-support/policies/
• Cisco End-of-Life Policy: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/eos-eol-policy.html
• Per-product notices are linked inline on the master table above.