Steam will stop supporting 32-bit Windows versions in 2026

PC gaming's largest storefront will stop being supported on legacy 32-bit Windows machines at the turn of the new year.

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Valve has officially confirmed that it will be ending support for Steam on PCs running Windows 32-bit installs. Starting January 1, 2026, Steam will no longer support Windows 10 32-bit (the only such OS in use on its platform). This deadline is months after Microsoft's own impending Windows 10 cut-off in October. Interestingly enough, as The Verge points out, the current version of Steam is actually 32-bit but future versions after the end support date will be 64-bit.

Valve confirms that the launcher itself will still function "in the near term" on 32-bit, but won't receive security updates nor can Steam Support help 32-bit users with technical issues they may face.

Only 0.01% of Steam Hardware Survey users are running Windows, and while these surveys are optional and random, the amount of 32-bit users is so small that the platform isn't even reflected in the data.

Check below for Valve's announcement:

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.