Steam Will Stop Supporting 32-Bit Operating Systems on January 1st 2026

Valve has announced that on the literal, very beginning of 2026, that Steam would no longer be supported on 32-bit operating systems. Now, unless you work for the division of McLaren responsible for airlifting broken F1 models back to their factory and happen to be using the same computer to goof off, this is extremely unlikely to affect you in any meaningful way. Still, if you happen to be using a 32-bit operating system in 2025 and you use Steam, it's best to upgrade to 64-bit now.

To clarify, this is halting support only for 32-bit operating systems, not 32-bit games themselves. Your collection of old or retro-styled games are perfectly safe.

Quote From Valve

As of January 1 2026, Steam will stop supporting systems running 32-bit versions of Windows. Windows 10 32-bit is the only 32-bit version that is currently supported by Steam and is only in use on 0.01% of systems reported through the Steam Hardware Survey. Windows 10 64-bit will still be supported and 32-bit games will still run.

Existing Steam Client installations will continue to function for the near term on Windows 10 32-bit but will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

To ensure continued updates and compatibility, users should update to a 64-bit version of Windows.

This change is required as core features in Steam rely on system drivers and other libraries that are not supported on 32-bit versions of Windows. Future versions of Steam will run on 64-bit versions of Windows only. We strongly encourage all 32-bit Windows users to update sooner rather than later.