Drop support for Windows 8.1

Author: lazka

web/docs/windows_support.md

@@ -11,12 +11,12 @@ In some cases we can't please both groups at the same time, so we have to find c
 
 **The GUI Installer:** Requires 64-bit Windows 10 (1809+) / Windows Server 2019.
 
-**Msys/Cygwin Packages**: Requires 64-bit Windows 8.1 / Windows Server 2012 R2.
+**Msys/Cygwin Packages**: Requires 64-bit Windows 10 / Windows Server 2016.
 
-**Mingw Packages**: Requires 64-bit Windows 8.1 / Windows Server 2012 R2.
+**Mingw Packages**: Requires 64-bit Windows 10 / Windows Server 2016.
 Upstream software may impose additional requirements.
 
-**Mingw Toolchains**: MINGW32/MINGW64 environments allow targeting Windows 7+ still. All others allow targeting Windows 8.1+.
+**Mingw Toolchains**: MINGW32/MINGW64 environments allow targeting Windows 7+ still. All others allow targeting Windows 10+.
 
 **Hardware Requirements**: We try to follow the minimum hardware requirements of the oldest Windows versions we support. Upstream software may impose additional requirements.
 
@@ -38,6 +38,8 @@ We no longer support these configurations, but here's a list of resources that m
 
 Various changes affecting the supported Windows versions and hardware for both pre-built packages and programs built using our toolchains.
 
+**2026-02-28**: Dropped active support for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
+
 **2025-11-18**: The community maintained 32-bit MSYS2 repo at
 https://github.com/jeremyd2019/msys2-build32 is [no longer
 updated](https://github.com/jeremyd2019/msys2-build32/commit/82d133b596146ecddb89d5af8c3560b31e13f726).

web/news.md

@@ -5,6 +5,14 @@ summary: Important events happening.
 
 This page lists important changes or issues affecting MSYS2 users. You can [:material-rss: subscribe via RSS](../news.xml). We also post them to [Mastodon](https://fosstodon.org/@msys2org) / [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/msys2org.bsky.social), including some not-so-important things :)
 
+### 2026-02-28 - Dropping support for Windows 8.1
+
+As Windows 8.1 has been end-of-life (EOL) for three years, Firefox has stopped
+supporting it as of today, and our download statistics show that only <0.05% of
+our users are on Windows 8.1, we have decided to drop support for Windows 8.1 in
+MSYS2. This does not mean that things will immediately stop working on Windows
+8.1, but we will no longer attempt to resolve issues specific to it.
+
 ### 2026-02-01 - Rust Cygwin packages update
 
 Back in September we got our first Rust-based Cygwin package with fish shell v4,