Let’s Encrypt sets a date for 64-day certificates

Let’s Encrypt will shorten its default certificate lifetime to 64 days on February 10, 2027. Existing valid certificates will not be revoked. Automated clients supporting ACME Renewal Info can follow the authority’s renewal guidance, while scripts built around fixed 90-day assumptions need review. The staging environment switches earlier, giving operators a place to test.

Let’s Encrypt · Oct 7, 2026

Why it matters

Certificate automation must renew and deploy successfully more often; a hard-coded schedule can quietly become unsafe.

More context

Test against staging after October 14, 2026. Check your client’s ARI support, renewal-failure alerts and service reloads. The announcement recommends lifetime-relative renewal for custom schedules. Authorization reuse also falls from 30 days to 10; endpoints and issuance chains stay unchanged.

Keep in mind

This is a scheduled future change, not a statement that today’s certificates already expire sooner. Testing issuance alone does not verify that your application deploys the renewed certificate. No server settings were changed for this story.

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