manylinux currently plans to drop Python 3.8 builds on 2026-05-05

Python 3.8 reached EOL on 2024-10-07. At this time, it's still used to produce wheels for 35% of active projects (including py3 or abi3 wheels which would not be affected by the drop in the same way). Python 3.8 represents less than 5% of overall manylinux wheels downloads. All those numbers are dropping.
Python 3.8 is the version used on Ubuntu 20.04 (currently in extended support phase, the standard support ended on 2025-04-02) which represents a 3rd of downloads. Another large share of downloads come from Amazon Linux 2 which will reach EOL on 2026-06-30.

The date chosen by manylinux is both a 5 months notice to gather feedback early on and maps to CPython 3.15.0b1 release date.

This issue is mostly created for the manylinux one to get more visibility as it will have a direct impact on cibuildwheel.