Microsoft’s lifecycle notices put Access 2021 and Access LTSC 2021, and the whole Office 2021 family, out of support on 13 October 2026. There is no extension and no Extended Security Updates programme — Windows 10 had one, Office 2021 does not. Access 2016 and Access 2019 already went on 14 October 2025.
Your database does not stop working. Microsoft’s own wording is that the apps “will continue to function, but you could be exposed to security risks”. On 14 October your .accdb opens exactly as it did the day before. Anyone telling you the lights go out is selling something.
What ends is security fixes, bug fixes and support. The honest version of the deadline is narrower: it is the date an unpatched Office component starts handling your business data, and the date most IT policies stop allowing it. If you are on Microsoft 365 rather than a one-time 2021 licence, none of this applies to you.
Every “what to do about Office 2021” article points you at Office 2024 or Microsoft 365. For an Access owner that advice is incomplete in a way that costs money, because most of those editions do not contain Access at all:
And LTSC Professional Plus has no public price: Microsoft sells it through certified partners on a quote. So the actual question in front of you is not “upgrade or not”. It is whether you are about to buy a higher edition, per person, quoted by a reseller, because of one database.
Buy LTSC Professional Plus 2024. Like for like, nothing to rebuild, five years of support. If the Access application is genuinely doing work nothing else does, this is the sane choice and you should take it.
Move to Microsoft 365. Access is included in the business plans, and the ceilings come with it: 2 GB, and the corruption that shows up when several people share a file. You have bought time, not a different situation.
Ask whether it still needs to be Access. Only worth it if the answer is more than “a renewal is due”. If the database is a handful of forms, a list and a couple of reports that several people need at once, the edition upgrade is paying to keep a constraint. What we do instead is on the Access page — including exactly what replaces VBA, and where that stops.
Access is not dying and this deadline does not make it dying. It still ships, Microsoft 365 keeps it current, and if it works for you it works. We are an early product from a very small company, and what happens to your data if we disappear is a fair question to ask before you move anything.
If you would rather not rebuild it yourself: tell us what the old system does and we will build a working version and show you. No fee and no card — what we build fits the free plan, and we ask you to pay only once it is genuinely running your business.