April 30. AWS Lambda stops patching Node.js 20.x.
AWS published three phases:
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April 30: security patches stop, console blocks creation.
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August 31: Lambda blocks new function creation entirely.
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September 30: updates to existing functions blocked. Invocations keep running indefinitely on all of them.
Node 22 has been LTS since October 2024. It buys a full year past April 30. Node 24 is already there if you want to skip a step. Node 20 is on the clock.
I've done these migrations before. I believe this kind of update should run ASAP. The longer you wait, the more a patch becomes a project.
Two habits keep mine painless. Every AWS SDK call sits behind a thin abstract class, so when v3 ships, one file changes, not 30.
A nightly script bumps runtimes in a test account, runs the test suites, flags breakage before I touch anything. It can catch build errors or regressions before they ship.
No worries, your functions won't brick on May 1. They'll just run unpatched. The September 30 update block is the real cliff, not April 30.
The cheapest time to migrate is before the patch pipeline stops. The second cheapest is never.