Microsoft has published which applications will be part of the next perpetual Office and will again receive five years of guaranteed support until 2029. Access is of course included.
The next version of Office has long been expected for the second half of 2024. However, Microsoft has only been announcing details like release dates and included applications of the next perpetual licenses of Office at very short notice for some versions now.
Customers should preferably take the subscription/rental version Microsoft 365. However, many customers around the world are not able or willing to do this. That's why there is still a new purchase version every 2-3 years. One advantage of these versions is that - unlike M365 - they have a guaranteed support period and therefore offer security and predictability in this respect.
The first Office 2024 variant to be released is the volume license, which Microsoft nowadays calls LTSC (Long Time Servicing Channel). The LTSC preview was therefore announced this March and declared available in April in a Microsoft blog post:
The support period of 5 years is confirmed in both articles. In the April article and in another one on the installation of LTSC, Access is explicitly mentioned as part of Office 2024.
None of this is surprising, but since the best antidote to the usual rumours about Access are official facts and links from the manufacturer, we want to specifically point out Microsoft's new support guarantee for Access 2024 until 2029.
Supplement Sep 18, 2024
Meanwhile, Office LTSC 2024 and the applications can be found in Microsoft's support list. As for the complete Office and all individual applications, the end of support for Access LTSC 2024 is indicated with Oct 9, 2029.
I wonder if that marketing issue is a feature or a bug.
Great news, but this is just at the same sort of time that Access has been hidden in the Microsoft 365 Business plan comparisons. Rather than appearing at the top along with Publisher, it has been hidden down in the checklist with the latter which we know is going to go EOL. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products
It feels like Access is in the middle of another tug of war here, just like it is with the Outlook teams' direction.