Blender 4.2 LTS is over. Here is the number I put on 18 add-ons.

Blender 4.2 LTS stopped getting fixes in July 2026.

It now sits under Previous LTS Releases on Blender's LTS page. Released 14 July 2024, last patched to 4.2.23, finished.

I sell eighteen add-ons. Each one names a minimum Blender version, and I had to pick again. 5.2 was not the obvious answer.

Two thirds of the platform still says 4.2

I pulled the Blender extensions listing API this morning. It lists 1,383 extensions, and 1,124 of those are add-ons.

756 of them declare 4.2.0 as their minimum. That is two thirds of Blender's own platform, sitting on a dead release.

Only 32 add-ons require 5.2 or newer. 221 require 5.0 or newer.

Here is the part that should worry you. Only 42 of the 1,124 declare a maximum version at all.

Of those 42, twenty exclude 5.2. Twenty add-ons out of 1,124 say out loud where they stop.

The other 1,104 say nothing. Saying nothing is not the same as working.

The number is a label, not a lock

I wanted to know what that minimum actually does. So I built a test add-on that declares Blender 99.0.0 as its minimum.

It installed on 4.5.3 and on 5.1.1. It enabled. Its register function ran, and Blender said nothing.

Then I packaged the same code as a real extension, with a manifest instead of the old bl_info block. Blender 5.1.1 refused it by name: this Blender version doesn't meet the minimum supported version.

So there are two systems. A manifest minimum is checked. A bl_info minimum is decoration.

Every one of mine that I have opened is still the second kind.

Then I tested my own and it failed

Lego Generator declares Blender 4.2, in the code and on the listing. I installed it on four Blender versions and ran its one operator on a sphere.

• 3.6.22: enabled, then raised AttributeError on the node tree interface. That API arrived in 4.0.
• 4.5.3 LTS: enabled, then raised KeyError on a socket that does not exist there.
• 5.0.1: built its fifteen-node group and attached the modifier in about a second.
• 5.1.1: same, clean.

Enabling proved nothing. All four enabled. Two of them then died on the first click.

That listing has been wrong since July. No error message told me.

One socket moved and nothing announced it

The thing that broke it is small. The Mesh to Volume node has a Resolution Mode setting.

In Blender 4.5 that setting is a node property. In 5.0 it is an input socket, and the property is gone.

I checked both in a headless session. In 4.5 the node has five inputs. In 5.0 it has six, with Resolution Mode added between Density and Voxel Size.

My code reads the socket. So it runs on 5.0 and raises on 4.5.

Blender 5.2 has three more of these

The 5.2 Python API notes list them plainly.

Geometry Nodes modifier inputs moved off custom properties onto real properties. Socket identifiers changed on the Compare and Random Value nodes. Sculpt automasking settings moved into their own struct.

None of that looks dangerous in a changelog. Each one is a string that used to work.

The version number is a support promise

I wrote about Superhive's support period in June. This is the same problem from the other end.

Your obligation is one release. Your inbox is every release your buyers are actually running.

Blender's own extensions page says it out loud: extensions don't update automatically. Somebody on a pinned Blender stays on a pinned add-on for years.

The number I picked

Eight of my eighteen listings name no Blender version at all. That is worse than a wrong number, and it is where I started.

For the rest, the floor is now the oldest version I have run the tool on. Not the oldest I hope it works on.

For Lego Generator that is 5.0. Transition FX enabled clean on all four, but I have not run every preset yet.

So its listing still names no version. That is honest, not lazy.

Where the code allows it, my floor is 4.5, not 5.2. 4.5 LTS is supported to July 2027 and 5.2 to July 2028. 4.2 is supported to nothing.

Picking 5.2 would look tidy. It would also put me with 32 add-ons out of 1,124.

Four things to do before you edit a listing

1. Install each add-on on the version you claim, then run one real operator. Enable is not a test.
2. Run it again on the newest release. Note the first line that raises, not just that it raised.
3. Set the minimum to the oldest version that passed step one. Delete the number you guessed.
4. If it breaks above a version, declare a maximum. Forty-two add-ons out of 1,124 have done it.

The fourth one is the whole argument.

A minimum protects nobody, because Blender does not enforce it on a legacy add-on. A maximum is the only sentence on your listing that a buyer on 5.2 can use.