Steam confirms plans to drop support for 32-bit OS’
Steam is dropping support for 32-bit Windows OS’ in 2026
On January 1st, 2026, Valve’s Steam platform will no longer support 32-bit Windows operating systems. This follows last year’s removal of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 OS support from the platform. Right now, Windows 10 32-bit is the only 32-bit OS that Steam supports. Windows 11 does not have a 32-bit version.
Since Windows 10 32-bit users account for only 0.01% of Steam’s users, this removal of support is a non-issue for most PC gamers. Furthermore, this removal will come after Microsoft discontinuation Windows 10’s security support.
Windows 32-bit OS Support
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.
– Steam
Why is Steam dropping 32-bit OS support?
Future versions of Steam will only support 64-bit OS’ moving forward. Why? The simple answer is that planned platform upgrades and core features of Steam rely on drivers and other libraries that only support 64-bit OS’. Future versions of Steam will only support 64-bit OS’. That means that users of 32-bit OS’ should upgrade their systems. Valve recommends that users do this “sooner rather than later”.
You can join the discussion on Valve’s plan to make Steam 64-bit only on the OC3D Forums.
