VMware licensing in 2026: what the Broadcom changes mean

From perpetual licence to subscription: the chronology

Broadcom completed the VMware acquisition in November 2023 and rebuilt the business model within months. To understand today’s situation, you should know this chain of decisions:

The price consequences are documented: in May 2026 Gartner analyst Paul Delory put the typical rise in licensing bills at 300 to 400 percent, members of the European cloud association CISPE reported increases of 800 to 1,500 percent to the EU Commission, and AT&T put the increase it was quoted at 1,050 percent in court filings.

The product world in 2026: VVF, VCF and the future of the small editions

• vSphere Foundation (VVF): the smaller bundle for classic virtualization, with 0.25 TiB of vSAN capacity per core. Broadcom publishes no price list; a German reseller lists 192.75 EUR net per core per year in September 2026. Beware: according to Broadcom, VVF is no longer available in some EMEA countries, and trade press reports that it now goes almost exclusively to customers who also buy VCF.
• Cloud Foundation (VCF): the large bundle including NSX, automation and 1 TiB of vSAN capacity per core. Reseller list price in September 2026: 362.24 EUR net per core per year; VMware itself cited a list price of 350 USD in 2024.
• vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus: still on the product list, but capped at version 8 Update 3; the same reseller lists vSphere Standard at 51.25 EUR net per core per year. According to trade press, customers have often received no renewal quotes for it, or only quotes built around VCF. In early September 2026 Broadcom announced a new vSphere Standard release; price and terms are still open.
• Free ESXi: Broadcom offers the free edition of the hypervisor only up to version 8 Update 3; ESXi 9 is not available for free. If you rely on it, you are on version 8 too, and therefore facing the end of support in October 2027.

Understanding core licensing: the 16-core minimum

VMware is licensed per physical CPU core, with a minimum of 16 cores per CPU. A CPU with 8 or 12 cores still costs 16 core licences. All physical cores of all CPUs in a host are licensed; hyperthreads do not count, because only physical cores are counted. For small servers, concretely:

How these amounts compare against alternatives is shown in the detailed Proxmox versus VMware cost comparison using the same scenario over five years.

The deadline: 11 October 2027

On that day, general support for vSphere 8 ends: the last version that was available as a perpetual licence, and the highest version of vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus. After that there is only technical guidance until October 2029, meaning no regular patches. For existing customers with perpetual licences this is the effective end of the old world: a hypervisor without security updates is not sustainable, least of all as the foundation under all of a company’s servers.

What happens if you do not renew

• Subscription expires: the right to use ends with the subscription. Running VMs keep running, but according to Broadcom powered-off VMs can no longer be started under vSphere 8, and management via vCenter is impaired. Under vSphere 9 there is a 90-day grace period, after which hosts disconnect from vCenter and new workloads no longer start.
• Late renewal: according to distributor information from March 2025, Broadcom charges a 20 percent surcharge on the price of the first subscription year when a subscription is renewed late. Broadcom has not documented this publicly, so have the terms confirmed in writing in your quote.
• Perpetual licence without support: the licence remains valid and, according to Broadcom, ESXi and vCenter keep operating normally, but there are no new patches or updates. Since May 2025 Broadcom has been sending letters to customers shortly after their support contracts expire, stating that anyone installing patches released after that point may be subject to review; security patches for zero-day vulnerabilities are exempt.

Your three options: renew, shrink or switch

Option 1: renew, but negotiate first

If VMware is a given, make it a deliberate one: request the renewal quote early, consider multi-year terms in exchange for discounts, align the licensed core count exactly with actual sizing, and question bundle components you do not use. The documented price ranges show that negotiating pays. Because Broadcom has cut its partner base considerably, also clarify early which reseller or partner can actually provide your quote.

Option 2: shrink

Many environments have grown organically over the years. Consolidating workloads, decommissioning legacy systems or moving individual services to managed or cloud offerings reduces the core count and with it the subscription cost directly. Often this is the fastest lever, without any platform change.

Option 3: switch

For typical SME workloads a platform switch is more realistic in 2026 than ever: in a survey by the analyst firm Virtified of 450 VMware customers across 14 countries, half plan to reduce usage by 2028, and Gartner expects around 35 percent of today’s VMware workloads to run elsewhere by 2028. What the move costs is covered in the Proxmox versus VMware cost comparison, and how it works in practice in the VMware to Proxmox migration guide. To be fair: Gartner also warns that there is no one-to-one replacement for the full VCF package. If you genuinely use its special features, you do not switch lightly.

Decision aid: which option fits whom

• You use VCF-specific features (vSAN stretched clusters, NSX) or your business application is certified for VMware only: renew and negotiate.
• Your environment has grown larger than necessary: shrink first, then reassess.
• You run standard workloads on two to five hosts, and the subscription costs hurt or your vSphere Standard renewal is uncertain: evaluate the switch seriously, with a test cluster instead of gut feeling.
• Your support expires soon anyway and the hardware is up for renewal: combine the platform switch with the hardware cycle and save one migration.