PAN-OS release plan

Happy New Year 2026.

It has been some time I wanted to write that post about the PAN-OS software release strategy.

Until PAN-OS 10.2

Each supported PAN-OS version released a maintenance release every 2-3 months.

And unless, there was some critical bug passing through QA tests, there was not so many hotfix releases.

To illustrate that, you can check the number of bug fixed in the releases for PAN-OS 9.1.

["version","Nb fixes"], ['9.1.0', 8],

['9.1.1', 21],

['9.1.2', 89],

['9.1.3', 130],

['9.1.4', 72],

['9.1.5', 96],

['9.1.6', 69],

['9.1.7', 60],

['9.1.8', 74],

['9.1.9', 56],

['9.1.10', 110],

['9.1.11', 104],

['9.1.12', 90],

['9.1.13', 36],

['9.1.14', 26],

['9.1.15', 38],

['9.1.16', 50],

['9.1.17', 20],

['9.1.18', 12],

['9.1.19', 3],

In the list above (dumped from the release notes I saved for PAN-OS 9.1), I ignored the hotfix releases.
But you can see each maintenance release received more than 50 fixes until 9.1.13 then it decreased to be less than 50 fixes.
--> if you are still on PAN-OS 9.1, you can consider than after 9.1.13, the version is quite mature now as there are less software issues addressed.

So what has changed since PAN-OS 10.2?

"Service pack" release

["version","Nb fixes"], ['11.1.0', 11],

['11.1.1', 12],

['11.1.2', 16],

['11.1.3', 130],

['11.1.4', 17],

['11.1.5', 312],

['11.1.6', 52],

['11.1.7', 25],

['11.1.8', 246],

['11.1.9', 53],

['11.1.10', 29],

['11.1.11', 247],

['11.1.12', 41],

['11.1.13', 34],

This is the list of the regular maintenance releases.

If you look carefully the number of fixes. You can noticed there are some "service pack" releases : 11.1.5 with 312 fixes, 11.1.8 with 246 fixes and 11.1.11 with 247 fixes. While the other maintenance releases contain up to 50 fixes.

More Hotfix releases

["version","Nb fixes"], ['11.1.0-h1', 1],

['11.1.2-h1', 4],

['11.1.2-h3', 1],

['11.1.3-h1', 2],

['11.1.4-h1', 9],

['11.1.4-h4', 56],

['11.1.4-h9', 47],

['11.1.4-h13', 69],

['11.1.4-h15', 12],

['11.1.4-h16', 1],

['11.1.4-h17', 23],

['11.1.4-h18', 7],

['11.1.4-h25', 14],

['11.1.4-h27', 6],

['11.1.5-h1', 1],

['11.1.6-h1', 61],

['11.1.6-h3', 12],

['11.1.6-h4', 16],

['11.1.6-h5', 1],

['11.1.6-h6', 33],

['11.1.6-h7', 22],

['11.1.6-h10', 48],

['11.1.6-h14', 66],

['11.1.6-h17', 55],

['11.1.6-h19', 17],

['11.1.6-h20', 15],

['11.1.6-h21', 10],

['11.1.6-h22', 1],

['11.1.6-h23', 24],

['11.1.7-h1', 1],

['11.1.7-h2', 137],

['11.1.10-h1', 57],

['11.1.10-h4', 70],

['11.1.10-h5', 27],

['11.1.10-h7', 65],

['11.1.10-h9', 1],

['11.1.10-h10', 32],

With the new release plan, there is also more hotfix releases now.

Keep in mind the PAN-OS releases are still cumulative: 11.1.8 contains all the issues resolved since 11.1.0 until 11.1.8.