Node.js 20 is being deprecated on October 1, 2026
By Steven Van ·
Existing Vercel deployments keep running, but new ones on Node.js 20 will error after October 1, 2026 unless upgraded or containerised.
Vercel is deprecating Node.js 20 for Builds and Functions on October 1, 2026, following the runtime's end of life on April 30, 2026. Existing deployments will keep working: invocations to already-deployed Serverless Functions are unaffected. The cutoff applies to new deployments only, after which Node.js 20 will be disabled in Project Settings and projects still targeting it will error out when a new deployment is created.
To check which projects need attention, running vercel project ls --update-required lists any still pinned to a deprecated version. The Node.js version can be changed in Project Settings or via the engines field in package.json. Projects that cannot upgrade in time can instead deploy as a container image by adding a Dockerfile.vercel at the project root, since the Project Settings version does not apply to containers. Vercel still recommends upgrading when possible, since container users are responsible for their own Node.js security updates.
Full details are in the Node.js versions documentation.
