SAP confirmed in December 2025 that May 31, 2026 will be the final expiration date for Compatibility Pack usage rights for S/4HANA on-premise installations, extending the original December 31, 2025 deadline by five months (official SAP News announcement, December 2025). In March 2026, German SAP partner Innovabee relayed this information to their mid-market client base (Innovabee, March 2026), emphasizing that this extension should be considered a final reprieve, not an indication of future deadline postponements.
What Compatibility Packs Are
Compatibility Packs are temporary usage rights that allow SAP S/4HANA on-premise customers to continue using legacy functions inherited from SAP ECC within S/4HANA while migrating to native functions or equivalent cloud solutions. In essence, they provide a technical and legal bridge to avoid a functional big bang during the transition to S/4HANA.
After May 31, 2026, continuing to run these legacy functions without migrating to native or cloud equivalents will constitute out-of-scope license usage. A few complex modules benefit from exceptional extensions until December 31, 2030: Customer Service (CS), Logistics Execution – Transportation (LE-TRA), and Production Planning for Process Industries (PP-PI) (technical details in SAP Note 2269324, ASUG analysis).
Why This Matters for European Mid-Market Companies
The European mid-market, particularly manufacturing and industrial companies in the UK, DACH region, and Nordics, represents a significant portion of SAP’s on-premise installed base across Europe. Many of these organizations had deferred migration to native functions by relying on Compatibility Packs, expecting SAP might extend the deadline again. Stefan Steinle, EVP Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management, has made SAP’s position unambiguous: this extension is the last.
For CTOs and CFOs, this creates three immediate consequences:
- Project timelines become critical. Migrating from Compatibility Pack functions to native or cloud SAP solutions typically requires six to twelve months for mid-market companies, depending on complexity. Starting in April 2026 for a transition before end-May creates an impossibly narrow window. Projects not yet initiated will shift into reactive compliance mode rather than strategic transformation.
- Pressure on expert resources intensifies. When a vendor sets a firm deadline for its largest European installed base, demand for qualified SAP consultants naturally concentrates in the preceding twelve months. The typical outcome: constrained availability, rising daily rates, and systems integrators prioritizing their strategic accounts.
- On-premise vs cloud decisions become unavoidable. SAP indicates it will offer “tailored programs” to support transitions to equivalent cloud solutions. This clearly signals that SAP is steering remediation toward RISE with SAP or dedicated cloud modules rather than extending on-premise lifecycles.
Key Monitoring Points Through May
Three areas requiring attention for affected organizations:
- Precise inventory of functions using Compatibility Packs. Many CTOs discover late in the process that they’re consuming more than expected, particularly in logistics, finance, and HR modules. SAP Note 2269324 provides the official starting point for this audit.
- Contractual position after May 31, 2026. In practice, continuing to use legacy functions exposes organizations to license audit risk. Companies must secure written confirmation from their SAP account manager regarding their chosen remediation scenario.
- Available integration capabilities. If the project starts now, priority should be identifying a systems integrator with proven experience on comparable scope, rather than hoping to learn alongside a partner with less relevant exposure.
For deeper context, read our SAP S/4HANA vs Oracle Cloud ERP comparison, our analysis Cloud vs on-premise: advantages and disadvantages, and our guide to European ERP alternatives to understand available options beyond the SAP ecosystem.
