The Apache OpenNLP team announces that the 1.9.x release line, and with it the whole 1.x series, has reached end of life. Apache OpenNLP 1.9.5, released in June 2026, is the final release of that line.
There will be no further 1.9.x releases.
No bug fixes, dependency updates or security fixes will be made for 1.9.x or any earlier version.
Issues can only be addressed on a supported release.
The supported release lines are the 2.x and 3.x series. The current releases of both are on our download page. See our security page for the version support policy.
Existing 1.x artifacts remain available from Maven Central and the Apache archive, but they are unmaintained and are not recommended for new or existing deployments.
We encourage all users still on 1.x to upgrade. A few things to be aware of:
OpenNLP 1.9.x builds on Java 8. OpenNLP 2.5.x requires Java 17 or later, and OpenNLP 3.x requires Java 21 or later.
The org.apache.opennlp:opennlp-tools coordinates are unchanged in the 2.x line, so the dependency
itself does not need to be replaced. In 3.x the project has been modularized and opennlp-runtime
becomes the entry-point dependency. See the Maven
and Gradle pages for the current coordinates.
Models trained with OpenNLP 1.x still load in 2.x and 3.x. New pre-trained models for a growing number of languages are available on our models page.
The current developer manual and Javadoc are on the documentation page. The archived 1.x documentation remains available here.
If you run into problems while upgrading, please reach out on the users mailing list. We are happy to help.
--The Apache OpenNLP Team
10 August 2026