During the Platforms State of the Union at WWDC, Apple just announced that macOS 26 Tahoe will be the last release of macOS that supports Intel. That means from next year, major new versions of Apple’s desktop operating system will only run on Apple Silicon Macs (that is, 2020 M1 models and newer).
Of course, Intel Macs will continue to get critical security updates for some time thereafter. But users should not expect to be able to update to get new features from macOS 27 onwards, as no Intel Mac will be supported on macOS 27.
In some ways, Apple has already stopped supporting some non-Apple Silicon models of its lineup. macOS Tahoe does not work with any Intel MacBook Air or Mac mini for instance.
But Tahoe does still support some Intel Macs. That includes compatibility with the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 2020 Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 iMac, and the 2019 Mac Pro.
Based on Apple’s warning, you can expect that macOS 27 will drop support for all of these legacy machines, and therefore macOS 26 will be the last compatible version. These devices will continue to receive security updates for another three years, however.
Going forward, the minimum support hardware generations will be from 2020 onwards, as that is when Apple began the Apple Silicon transition with the M1. M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros followed in 2021.
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