Overview
- WhatsApp, which ended support on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, no longer runs on devices that use Android 5.0 or 5.1 and now requires Android 6.0 or newer.
- The cutoff applies to both WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business because the two apps share the same underlying codebase.
- Affected users were warned months in advance via in‑app notifications and are advised to check for system updates or move to a newer phone and restore chats from Google Drive or local storage.
- The number of users impacted is small overall but concentrated in regions where very old, low‑cost phones never received manufacturer updates, including parts of India, Brazil, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
- Dropping support for Android 5 (Lollipop), first released in 2014, is a common developer step to reduce testing burdens and enable features and security fixes that older operating systems cannot run.