NVIDIA has stated that it will not be extending its Game Ready Driver support for Windows 10 beyond October 2026, which means that Microsoft’s recent decision to extend the operating system’s support becomes irrelevant for gamers. The company’s latest support document states that it will issue its last Game Ready Driver compatible with Windows 10 in October 2026, and from November 2026 on, users who are still using the operating system will no longer get game-related updates or improvements.
The decision has been made even though Microsoft has decided to extend the Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows 10 until October 2027. This move was based on the fact that a large number of users are still using the older operating system—HP states that about 30% of PCs currently run Windows 10. Microsoft has also admitted in its earnings calls that the growth in Windows 11 was mainly caused by the end-of-support date for Windows 10, and that this growth momentum is now declining.
Microsoft is not under any obligation to require its partners to do the same, and NVIDIA is in fact one of the first of the big companies to state that it will not take part in the second round of extended support. The company had previously given Game Ready Driver support an extra year because of the large number of GeForce users who were still using Windows 10, but decided that a further extension was not justified.
From a security point of view, the situation is not serious – NVIDIA will keep issuing security updates for another three years, until at least October 2029. But for gamers the practical effects are important. Although the games currently in use will still function, new bugs will never be fixed and NVIDIA will not include any optimizations or provide support for new game titles. This issue will become more and more problematic over time, especially as major new PCs are released.
The article compares the situation to the Windows 7 period, during which NVIDIA ceased releasing Game Ready Drivers for that operating system in October 2021. Although security-only drivers were still being provided until September 2024, gaming on Windows 7 eventually became impractical since new games began to suffer from performance problems, bugs, or were simply blocked. Windows 10 is therefore expected to meet a similar fate.
By setting an example, NVIDIA may be encouraging other OEMs and chipmakers to do the same, and this could in turn speed up the decline of Windows 10 as a viable gaming platform. The article suggests that users of Windows 10 should now seriously think about switching to Windows 11.
