[German]Microsoft has announced its plans for Windows 11 25H2, which will be released later this year, on June 27, 2025. Users of Windows 11 24H2 should be able to switch to this new build of the operating system with little effort. It will therefore be a small feature update, which will come with different support periods.
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In a tech community post entitled Get ready for Windows 11, version 25H2 rom June 27, 2025, Microsoft published some details on the Windows IT Pro Blog.
Windows 11 25H2: When is it available?
The new Windows 11 25H2 operating system build has been available for Windows Insiders since June 27, 2025. The general availability for everyone is specified by Microsoft as the second half of 2025. I estimate that this new Windows 11 version will be available to Windows 11 users at the end of October or in November 2025.
Windows 11 25H2 planned via enablement update
On the question of how easy it is to switch to the new operating system version, Microsoft writes that users of Windows 11 version 24H2 can upgrade as quickly as a reboot. It's a lot of "beating around the bush" what Jason Letznek writes in the Techcommunity article. I'll summarize it below.
The background for the quick changeover is that Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 use a common servicing branch. Both operating system builds receive the same monthly updates, whereby the features for Windows 11 25H2 are simply not released.
Only when Microsoft generally releases this version will a so-called enablement update be distributed. This enables the features for Windows 11 25H2 and after a restart, the new 25H2 is available instead of 24H2.
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Only older Windows 11 versions that do not use the same maintenance branch must regularly download the complete feature update and install Windows 11 25H2 over the existing Windows.
Support for 24 or 36 months
Windows 11 25H2 will also have a support window of 24 months for the Home and Pro versions. Windows 11 25H2 Enterprise, Education and IoT, on the other hand, will be supported for 36 months. It is not clear from the blog post whether there will also be LTSC versions of Windows 11 25H2 Enterprise.
The blog post still regularly mentions optimizations in the development and maintenance of each Windows version – although the enablement update is old hat and was first introduced with Windows 10 1903 (see Insides: Windows 10 19H2 development/deployment (V1909)). This was a lesson learned from the disasters of previous versions, which always had to be rolled out as major feature updates and sometimes even withdrawn.
Now the talk is that the combined service stack updates (SSUs) with the latest cumulative updates (LCUs) have reduced the package size by 40%. However, it should also be noted that the cumulative monthly Windows 11 24H2 was recently over 4 GB because Microsoft packs its AI stuff in (see Windows 11 24H2/Server 2025: Why is the May 2025 update KB5058411 over 4.3 GB in size?)).
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