The latest support policy for ESP-IDF can be found at https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/blob/master/SUPPORT_POLICY.md
Each ESP-IDF major and minor release (V4.0, V4.1, etc) is supported for 18 months after the initial stable release date.
Supported means that the ESP-IDF team will continue to apply bug fixes, security fixes, etc to the release branch on GitHub, and periodically make new bugfix releases as needed.
Users are encouraged to upgrade to a newer ESP-IDF release before the support period finishes and the release becomes End of Life (EOL). It is our policy to not continue fixing bugs in End of Life releases.
Pre-release versions (betas, previews, -rc and -dev versions, etc)
are not covered by any support period. Sometimes a particular feature is
marked as \"Preview\" in a release, which means it is also not covered
by the support period.
The ESP-IDF Programming Guide has information about the different versions of ESP-IDF (major, minor, bugfix, etc).
Some releases (starting with ESP-IDF V3.3) are designated Long Term Support (LTS). LTS releases are supported for 30 months (2.5 years) after the initial stable release date.
A new LTS release will be made at least every 18 months. This means there will always be a period of at least 12 months to upgrade from the previous LTS release to the following LTS release.
ESP-IDF V3.3 was released in September 2019 and is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, meaning it will be supported for 30 months until February 2022.
v3.3 in September 2019.release/v3.3.v3.3.1, v3.3.2, etc. Users are encouraged to
always update to the latest bugfix release.ESP-IDF release V3.3 and all newer releases will follow this support period policy. The support period for each release will be announced when the release is made.
For releases made before the support period policy was announced, the following support periods apply: