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End of Life: Joomla 1.6

updated 20 October 2026

Joomla 1.6 reached its end of life on 19 August 2011: since then there have been no security updates and no bug fixes for it – for more than 15 years. The last version was Joomla 1.6.6 of 26 July 2011. Here you can read what Joomla 1.6 stood for and how a website on Joomla 1.6 gets to Joomla 6 today.

Series "Joomla end of life" · part 3 of 9 · All Joomla versions at a glance

Joomla 1.6 in figures

Released10 January 2011 (Joomla 1.6.0)
Last version1.6.6 of 26 July 2011
Versions in the series7 (1.6.0 to 1.6.6)
End of security updates19 August 2011
Supported for7 months
SuccessorJoomla 1.7

Is your website still running on Joomla 1.6?

We check what can be taken over and bring your website to Joomla 6 – prepared on a copy, switched only after your approval. We name the effort after an inventory.

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What Joomla 1.6 stood for

  • Access control (ACL) with user groups you define yourself.
  • Categories nested to any depth – the rigid sections were dropped.
  • Template styles: one template with several sets of settings.
  • A short-term release, replaced by Joomla 1.7 after just over six months.

More in the post Review: Joomla 1.6.

What that means today

Anyone still running a website on Joomla 1.6 today has been running it without security updates for more than 15 years. Known holes are listed publicly in databases and are searched for on purpose.

On top of that comes PHP: Joomla was only built for PHP 7 from version 3.5, and PHP 5 has had no updates since 31 December 2018 (php.net). Hardly any host still offers such old PHP versions – after a change at the host, a website like this often shows nothing but an error 500.

The way to Joomla 6

There is no update in the backend from Joomla 1.6 – too many major versions lie in between. The way is a rebuild on Joomla 6 into which we take over your content: articles, categories and menus. We rebuild the look or renew it with you, and we redirect old addresses to the new ones so that Google and your visitors find you again.

We name the effort after an inventory, before we start – more on the page Joomla update and migration.

Sources: Joomla downloads (versions and dates), Joomla 1.7.0 announcement, 19 July 2011, php.net (end of PHP versions).
Updated on 20 October 2026: dates checked against the official Joomla sources.

Rather not migrate yourself? We look at your website, name the effort before we start and usually answer on the next working day.

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Series

Joomla end of life

  1. Joomla 1.0 · ended since 22 July 2009
  2. Joomla 1.5 · ended since September 2012
  3. Joomla 1.6 · ended since 19 August 2011 (this post)
  4. Joomla 1.7 · ended since 24 February 2012
  5. Joomla 2.5 · ended since 31 December 2014
  6. Joomla 3.x · ended since 17 August 2023
  7. Joomla 4.x · ended since 14 October 2025
  8. Joomla 5.x · security updates only until 12 October 2027
  9. Joomla 6.x · current until 16 October 2029

All versions at a glance: release, last version, end of support

Ufuk Avcu

Owner and developer of the Joomla Agency. Has been building and looking after Joomla websites since 2009.

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