The TL;DR:
Varnish 6.0 was released back in March 2015 and while having software be supported for nearly a decade sounds great for users, we have to weigh the maintenance cost, and the fact that technology moves faster and faster, so holding onto old code makes it harder to innovate.
This is why we are setting the expiration date for Varnish 9.1 LTS “only” 2 years in the future. We expect major architectural changes soon in the main branch, including the addition of Rust components to our codebase, as previously announced, making the March 2027 release a significant milestone. While providing a 9.1-based LTS offers immediate stability, we also want to encourage our community to embrace these technical advancements, so a two-year window strikes the right balance. Additionally, we are modernizing the Varnish Enterprise base: a recent major update to the VCL compiler brings the Enterprise VCL syntax almost on par with Varnish Cache 9.0, meaning it is time to let go of 6.x as an LTS.
The “LTS” meaning stays the same: while supported 9.1 will receive security and important bug fixes but no new features to focus on stability and predictability.
As Varnish used to not support TLS termination, Hitch was a necessary stop-gap solution to allow our reverse-proxy to operate with HTTPS. This was a while back now, and not only does Varnish natively support TLS now, but the solutions to terminate TLS are also more diverse, meaning that Hitch isn’t as necessary anymore.
This is why we’ve decided to discontinue Hitch after March 2027, aligning the date on Varnish 6.0 EOL’s. We won’t be publishing new releases or providing further support for it.
Varnish Cache has been picking up speed for the past year with Varnish Gateway, Rust vmods, TLS support, packages and more on the way. Stay up-to-date with the official varnish.org website (update your bookmarks!) and join us on discord to chat with the community and get help on everything, from simple configuration to hacking on new features in core and in vmods!