For decades, the world of GIS licensing was defined by flexibility. Organizations typically purchased perpetual licenses, paid a modest maintenance fee, and utilized “concurrent use” (floating) models to share expensive resources among a large pool of engineers. That era is officially ending.
If you manage Esri licenses, the operational shifts occurring in late 2025 and throughout 2026 represent the most significant change to your budget structure in twenty years. We call this the Esri licensing migration—or “Silent Migration”—because it isn’t happening through a single, loud contract negotiation, but through administrative defaults and technical sunsets.
Here is what you need to know about the Esri licensing changes 2026 and how to survive the transition to the “locked” era.
The shift: ArcGIS perpetual license changes
The first signal of this shift is administrative. For years, keeping your software active was a routine matter of paying “maintenance”. As of late 2025, that mechanism has fundamentally changed.
Under the new ArcGIS licensing change, renewal quotes for perpetual ArcGIS Desktop licenses are no longer for “Maintenance”. Instead, they are automatically converted to quotes for User Types (Annual Subscriptions). This effectively migrates organizations from a Capital Expenditure (CapEx) model, where you own the asset, to an Operating Expenditure (OpEx) model. The perpetual asset you “owned” is now a rental agreement.
Additional Read: Software asset management best practices for 2026
The death of concurrency (the math problem)
The most brutal financial impact comes from the deprecation of the concurrent use license. In the old world, a firm with 100 civil engineers might only own 20 licenses because they “floated” between users who didn’t need them simultaneously. This 1:5 ratio kept costs manageable.
The new model is named user. In a strict named user environment, 100 engineers require 100 subscriptions.
This explains how Esri user types affect GIS budgets: there is no sharing. If you have casual users who only open a map once a week, you are now required to pay a full subscription price for that minimal value. This loss of efficiency is the primary driver of the Esri licensing impact on enterprise GIS.
The 2026 timeline: The “tech lockout”
While the licensing changes are financial, the technical changes are existential. Two critical dates in 2026 will force the hand of any organization trying to delay the switch.
- March 1, 2026: ArcMap is retired. This is a hard stop for the legacy platform with no further support or security updates.
- Q2 2026: ArcGIS concurrent use license deprecated for Pro. Esri has announced that versions of ArcGIS Pro released after Q2 2026 (likely Pro 3.7+) will technically cease to support concurrent use connections.
Note: You can delay this by “freezing” on ArcGIS Pro 3.6, but this prevents access to new features and eventually exposes you to security vulnerabilities.
Esri licensing strategy for large teams: Optimization
If you can no longer rely on license pooling to save money, you must switch your strategy to license optimization. In a named user world, “waste” is a subscription assigned to a user who doesn’t exist or hasn’t logged in for 90 days.
To control costs during the Esri licensing changes 2026, you must answer three questions:
- The “ghost” audit: Who is holding a license but hasn’t logged in for 30 days? These must be harvested and returned to inventory.
- Tier optimization: Who is assigned a “Professional” license but only using “Creator” features? Downgrading User Types is a high-impact way to ensure users aren’t over-provisioned.
- Active harvesting: Using tools like OpenLM, you can automate the process of revoking licenses from dormant users. If an engineer moves projects, the software should automatically reclaim the license.
Additional Read: The evolution of OpenLM License Access Control (LAC)
Conclusion
The “silent migration” is over, and the forced march to subscription has begun. While the cost per user is likely to rise, organizations that proactively manage their user types can still protect their bottom line. The door to the old world is closing—make sure you are on the right side of the budget when it shuts.
