Versions, forks and ecosystem
MariaDB release cadence, current LTS, MySQL divergence, Percona and friends
Release model
Since 10.x, MariaDB uses rolling mainline + LTS, similar to Ubuntu:
- Rolling mainline (12.0, 12.1, 12.2…) — roughly quarterly; each is supported only until the next rolling release (no back-patching), then the
.3becomes LTS - LTS (11.4, 11.8, 12.3) — now yearly (sped up from "every 2 years" in 2024)
- Format:
major.minor.patch, e.g.12.3.2
LTS support got shorter. 11.4 and earlier LTS keep 5 years of community support, but from 11.8 onward community LTS is 3 years (enterprise can extend for a fee).
Active versions (as of 2026-06)
| Version | Type | Released | EOL | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12.3 | LTS | 2026-05 | 2029-06 | ⭐ Latest LTS, production |
| 11.8 | LTS | 2025-06 | 2028-06 | LTS; VECTOR went GA here |
| 11.4 | LTS | 2024-05 | 2029-05 | Stable LTS (last 5-year one) |
| 12.2 / 12.1 / 12.0 | rolling | 2025–2026 | already EOL | Superseded by 12.3 LTS — don't deploy new |
| 10.11 | LTS | 2023-02 | 2028-02 | Legacy maintenance |
| 10.6 | LTS | 2021-07 | 2026-07-06 | EOL imminent (~3 weeks), upgrade now |
| ≤ 10.5 | — | — | EOL | Must upgrade |
Authoritative table: mariadb.org/about/#maintenance-policy
MariaDB ↔ MySQL — a short history
2009 Oracle acquires Sun (and thus MySQL)
Monty Widenius forks MariaDB
2014 MariaDB 10.0 adds features MySQL doesn't have
2016 MySQL 8.0 ships; the codebases drift further
2020 MariaDB 10.5 stops merging upstream MySQL changes
2024 MariaDB 11.4 LTS, fully independent roadmap
2025 MariaDB 11.8 LTS — VECTOR / HNSW goes GA
2026 12.0–12.2 rolling; 12.3 LTS (May) becomes the production pickToday MariaDB is its own product, not a "MySQL drop-in". Wire protocol and most SQL still compatible — treat anything advanced as a separate database.
Differences cheat sheet
| Topic | MySQL 8.0+ | MariaDB 11.x |
|---|---|---|
| JSON | full JSON_TABLE | partial, different syntax |
| CTE | standard | standard (earlier) |
| Window functions | standard | standard |
| Default engine | InnoDB | InnoDB |
| Default charset | utf8mb4 (8.0+) | utf8mb4 (10.6+) |
Default utf8mb4 collation | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci | utf8mb4_uca1400_ai_ci (11.5+) |
| Roles | 8.0+ | 10.0.5+ |
| VECTOR / ANN index | no (HeatWave only) | native (11.7 preview, GA in 11.8 LTS) |
| Columnar (OLAP) | no | ColumnStore engine |
| Clustering | Group Replication | Galera (default) |
| Open-source completeness | partial (HeatWave closed) | full |
| Upstream driver | Oracle | MariaDB Foundation + community |
The MariaDB family
- MariaDB Server — main project, GPL v2, maintained by MariaDB Foundation + MariaDB plc.
- MariaDB ColumnStore — columnar engine inside the same server, OLAP/data-warehouse.
- MariaDB Xpand (ex-ClustrixDB) — proprietary distributed SQL, only on SkySQL.
- Percona Server for MySQL — based on MySQL, not MariaDB; but Percona's toolkit (
pt-online-schema-change,pt-archiver,XtraBackup) works with MariaDB. - Drizzle — historical fork, dead since 2014.
- TiDB / OceanBase / PolarDB — MySQL-protocol-compatible new databases, not MariaDB forks.
Upgrade rules
- Never skip more than one major across an upgrade.
- Example path: 10.5 → 10.6 → 10.11 → 11.4 → 11.8 → 12.3
- Run
mariadb-upgradeafter each hop. - Backup. Backup. Backup.