Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration Is Still Happening in 2026

Six years after Magento 1's end of life, under 15% of Magento stores are still running it - down from nearly 50% in early 2022, but that remaining share carries real, escalating risk. 93% of Magento 1 sites currently carry a high or critical security risk rating. Here's the current state of migration, honestly.

The numbers, current as of 2026

Magento 1 was end-of-lifed by Adobe on June 30, 2020 - meaning stores still running it have gone more than five years without security patches, modern PHP compatibility, or updates from most third-party extension authors. Under 15% of Magento stores remain on Magento 1 as of early 2026, a real decline from nearly 50% in early 2022, but that remaining minority isn't a rounding error - it represents a meaningful number of mid-market retailers still operating on a platform with a 93% high-or-critical security risk rating.

Why the remaining 15% haven't moved yet

The honest reasons are almost always cost and complexity, not indifference to the risk. Migration timelines typically run 6-14 months end-to-end for mid-market retailers depending on complexity, and cost ranges from roughly $100,000 for a basic catalog migration up to $350,000 or more for a complex replatform involving B2B logic and ERP integration. For a resource-constrained team, that's a genuinely difficult project to prioritize against feature work - until the security exposure becomes acute.

The case for moving now rather than later

Two forces make waiting increasingly costly rather than neutral:

Security exposure only gets worse. Every month without patches on an already-unsupported platform is another month of accumulated, unaddressed vulnerability - this isn't a risk that plateaus, it compounds.

The migration is also your AI-readiness moment. If you're rebuilding your catalog architecture anyway, this is the point to design it agent-ready from the start rather than retrofitting structured schema, feed integrations, and headless architecture onto Magento 2 later as a second project. Doing both at once is materially cheaper than sequencing them.

The upside case is real too: 70% of merchants who migrated reported positive ROI within one year, according to compiled data from Adobe partner case studies and industry surveys - the migration isn't purely defensive spending, it typically pays back.

What a realistic migration actually involves

• Timeline: 6-14 months for mid-market complexity, with most projects landing in the 4-8 month range for less complex catalogs
• Cost: $100,000+ for a basic catalog migration, scaling to $350,000+ for B2B/ERP-integrated replatforms
• Architecture decision: most 2026 migrations land on a headless or composable architecture (Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, or a fully custom headless build) rather than a like-for-like Magento 2 monolith, since you're already doing the heavy lifting of a full replatform

Building AI-readiness into the migration plan

Since you're already touching every product record during a Magento 1 to 2 migration, this is the lowest-cost point to add complete Product/Offer schema, server-side rendering for AI crawlers, and feed integrations for AI shopping surfaces (ACP, UCP) - work that costs meaningfully more to bolt on after the fact. If your migration plan doesn't currently include this, it's worth adding before the project scope locks. Optimize Your Product Catalog for AI Agents covers the exact checklist.

Book a demo if you're planning a Magento 2 or ACCS migration and want AI shopping visibility built in from day one rather than as a follow-on project.

The upside here is measurable: House of Zelena went from 22% to 56% ChatGPT mention share in 6 months with us - see the House of Zelena case study. If you want to see where you stand before committing, start with the AI Shopping Assistant.