Valve has announced that Steam is finally ending support for 32-bit clients. Starting with the latest beta version, Steam will only be maintained on the 64-bit versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. This change will take full effect on January 1, 2026, where the 32-bit version will stop receiving any updates.
The change was shared alongside a Steam beta update changelog where the company stated that “The Steam client is now 64-bit on Windows 11 and Windows 10 64-bit” and that “Systems running 32-bit versions of Windows will continue receiving updates to the 32-bit Steam client until January 1, 2026”
This move follows Valve’s termination of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 support, which was arguably more annoying as it sealed the fate of these old operating systems, at least for gamers. The first stable version of these 64-bit-only clients is expected to roll out in the near future and will mainly concern those still running Windows 10 32-bit, since Windows 11 is only available in 64-bit. Fortunately, only a small fraction of Steam users will be impacted by this, as Windows 10 32-bit accounts for just 0.01% of the total. 63% of Steam users are currently on Windows 11.
Note that if you are among the 0.01%, Steam will continue to function normally, at least in the near future, but will no longer receive feature and security updates. Valve will also stop offering technical support for issues related to old operating systems and will no longer guarantee the software’s continued functionality. Therefore, the company encourages users to update to a 64-bit Windows to stay up to date.
For those wondering why, this change is required as core features in Steam rely on system drivers and libraries that are no longer supported on 32-bit versions of Windows. Additionally, this should free up development resources that can be used to improve the native ARM version of Steam.
If you are already running Windows 10 64-bit or Windows 11, you won’t see any difference, so don’t expect any performance changes as this is mainly related to compatibility.
