Free Windows 11 Upgrade: How to Move Off Windows 10 in 2026

Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025. Microsoft no longer ships security fixes for it outside the Extended Security Updates program, which means every day spent on Windows 10 without ESU coverage is a day spent on an increasingly exposed operating system. The good news: if your PC meets the requirements, moving to Windows 11 costs nothing. Here’s how it actually works in 2026, what “free” does and doesn’t cover, and what to do if your hardware isn’t on the approved list.

Is the upgrade still free?

Yes. Microsoft’s own upgrade FAQ is explicit: upgrades to Windows 11 from a genuine, activated Windows 10 licence are free, with no expiry date attached to that offer. The only cost you might hit is from your ISP if you’re on a metered or capped connection, since the download itself runs 4-5GB.

Check whether your PC qualifies

Before doing anything else, confirm eligibility rather than guessing:

1. Open Settings > Windows Update on your Windows 10 machine. If your PC qualifies, you’ll usually see a Windows 11 upgrade offered directly there.
2. If you don’t see it, download the PC Health Check app from Microsoft and run it — it tells you exactly which requirement (if any) is failing, rather than a generic “not compatible” message.

Minimum requirements

Windows 11 is stricter about hardware than any previous Windows release. The baseline, current as of 2026:

• Processor: 1GHz or faster, 2+ cores, and the specific model must be on Microsoft’s approved CPU list (broadly: 8th-gen Intel Core or newer, AMD Ryzen 2000-series or newer, or equivalent).
• RAM: 4GB minimum.
• Storage: 64GB or larger.
• Firmware: UEFI, with Secure Boot capability — legacy BIOS-only systems don’t qualify.
• TPM: version 2.0, present and enabled (a lot of “incompatible” verdicts on business-class PCs from 2017 onward come down to TPM being disabled in firmware rather than genuinely absent).
• Graphics: DirectX 12 or later, WDDM 2.0 driver.
• Display: 720p, over 9 inches diagonally, 8 bits per colour channel.
• Account: Windows 11 Home requires an internet connection and a Microsoft account during initial setup.

How to upgrade

If Windows Update offers you the upgrade directly, that’s the simplest path — click through it and let it run. If it isn’t showing up yet but PC Health Check confirms you’re eligible, you have two other official routes:

1. Windows 11 Installation Assistant — a small tool from Microsoft that walks you through the upgrade in place, keeping your files, apps, and settings.
2. Media creation tool / installation media — download and build a bootable USB if you’d rather do a clean install, or need to upgrade a PC that isn’t currently online.

Either way, once the upgrade completes you have a 10-day window to roll back to Windows 10 with your data intact if something doesn’t work for you — Windows keeps the old installation files for exactly this purpose, so don’t manually clear disk space from Windows.old until you’re sure you’re staying on 11.

What if your PC doesn’t qualify?

This is the situation a lot of people are actually in now that Windows 10 is past end of support. You’ve got three realistic options:

1. Enrol in Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU). Microsoft has extended the consumer ESU program twice — it now runs through October 12, 2027, not just the single year originally announced. Free if you turn on Windows Backup sync, free by redeeming 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or a one-time payment of $30 covering up to 10 devices. ESU only delivers critical and important security patches — no feature updates, no general bug fixes, no technical support.
2. Install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware anyway. This is unsupported by Microsoft and comes with real caveats — you may not receive updates reliably long-term — but it’s a well-documented path (registry bypass keys, or tools like Rufus) if you understand and accept the risk.
3. Replace the hardware. For anything business-critical, this is usually the actual right call once a machine is old enough to fail the CPU list.

Bottom line

If Windows Update or PC Health Check gives you the green light, there’s no reason to still be running Windows 10 in 2026 — the upgrade is free, reversible for 10 days, and closes the gap Microsoft stopped patching in October 2025. If your hardware doesn’t qualify, ESU buys you until October 2027 to plan a proper hardware refresh rather than leaving an unpatched machine on the network.