Node 20 has been end of life since April 30, 2026, Node 24 moves to Maintenance on October 20, and Node 26 becomes LTS on October 28, according to the official nodejs/Release schedule.
For production, run Node 24 today and move to Node 26 after October 28, because Node 26 then has support through April 30, 2029, a year longer than Node 24.
Our probe on four releases found that the upgrade path removes `crypto.createCipher` in 22, `tls.createSecurePair` in 24, and `SlowBuffer` and `fs.F_OK` in 26.