The feature is starting as  placeholder for tracking this activity and gathering requirements. It will evolve to a proper requirements issue

==

ACS 5.0 vision  (  source ) includes:

RHACS will become a  platform-aligned operator with OCP 5, targeting the October 2026 release. This deeper integration aims for a more unified experience and simplified management. Release once a week with fast stream as OCP but align releases with OCP releases

References: 

1. OpenShift.Next
2. Standardizing Lifecycle of Layered Products  
3. OpenShift 4 vs. 5 Lifecycle Comparison 
4. ACM - Support Extension to a 3-year EUS
5. Criteria for moving support from the OCP eng team to Sustaining Engineering  

1/16/2025

Decision ( Slack )

ACS will ship using "5.0" version for the following reasons

1. To make it easier for customers to recognize the meaning of particular versions. As a Platform Aligned operator,  this becomes especially significant when we think about EUS versions. OCP 5.2 will be EUS and so will ACS 5.2.  We don't want to confuse customers with different naming
2. To increase awareness for the removal (or hide behind feature flags) of long deprecated features, including Compliance 1.0

Technically, 5.0 will not have any out of the ordinary migration requirements. It will be published on the stable channel with an automatic upgrade from 4.12  

1/13/2025

Important outcome from call with OLM team  : We may ship ACS "5.0" without requiring a new channel, so we will continue to use "stable" and the other existing channles. 

There is no explicit requirement for an "unattended" upgrade.That means it is up to us. If we choose, for our own reasons (breaking change) then we would need to facilitate in a new channel, but as of today there is no such plan.   

10/29/2025 

•  Initial discussion with msugakov@redhat.com on understanding the differences between tier 1 and 2
• There are early thoughts on setting this up as a shared effort under eparis@redhat.com's organization, maybe even a sustainability team
• Misha will analyze the costs ( effort and infrastructure) in case the ACS team is tasked with it entirely on our won  
• Noted that multi cluster brings about interesting support matrix cases. Do we allow customers running an old version to secure new clusters?
  • Imagine 4.7 is EUS :

• Boaz reached out to ACM team.  sberens@redhat.com offered to work on this together