Is the Next.js Pages Router “Legacy” in 2026?

I’m currently working on a project I started a couple of years ago with the classic Next.js Pages Router + tRPC stack. I still love this stack.

It is simple, productive, boring in the best way, and I know exactly where everything lives. The project is also something I’ll probably be working on for the next few years, which led to a mildly uncomfortable question: Is Vercel going to kill the Pages Router out from under me?

Migrating a large codebase to the App Router is not exactly a casual weekend refactor. Even with AI agents helping there are architectural decisions, data-fetching changes, routing differences, and plenty of other issues waiting for you.

So I went digging into the current state of the Pages Router to see whether it is actually being deprecated, quietly abandoned, or just becoming the “old but still fine” option.

Here’s what I found.

The short answer

The Pages Router is legacy-ish, but it is not deprecated.

It is still officially supported, still documented, and still receiving updates and fixes. If you have a production Pages Router app, you probably do not need to panic.

But it is also very clearly not where Next.js is heading. The App Router is the future of the framework. That part is not subtle.

What the docs actually say

If you open the Next.js docs, you’ll see two routers:

• the App Router, built around React Server Components
• the Pages Router, which the docs describe as the original router, still supported and being improved

That wording matters. The Pages Router has not disappeared into some dusty archive folder. You can still switch between App Router and Pages Router docs from the sidebar, and the Pages Router documentation is still maintained.

The Pages Router building guide was updated recently, and the App Router migration guide is also actively maintained.

How the community talks about it

Outside of Vercel’s official docs, the community has mostly settled on a label: legacy. Not "dead", not "unsupported", not "never use this", just legacy.

The Pages Router is trusted, people know it works and lots of serious production apps still run on it. But if you are starting fresh, almost nobody is telling you to choose Pages Router first.

Why people call it legacy

When developers say “legacy”, they often mean one of two things. Sometimes they mean:

This is old, scary, fragile, undocumented, and we should run away

But other times they mean:

This is stable, widely used, and supported, but new feature development has moved elsewhere

The Pages Router is much closer to the second definition. It still gives you the classic Next.js model: predictable file-based routing, and client-side React where you expect it.

But the exciting new stuff is happening in the App Router: React Server Components, Server Actions, nested layouts, newer caching patterns, etc.

That is the real reason Pages Router gets called legacy. Because it is no longer the place where the framework is evolving.

Is deprecation actually coming?

I could not find any official deprecation notice. No removal timeline. No CLI warning. No “Pages Router will be removed in the Next.js 20” announcement.

The official docs still say the Pages Router is supported. The migration guide is framed as something you use when you are ready, not something you have to do immediately. So support may eventually go away someday, but nobody has a concrete date, and Vercel has not announced one.

My read is this: The Pages Router will probably be supported for years.

There is just too much production code depending on it. Removing it abruptly would be chaos, and Vercel knows that.

If you have been around React for a while, this pattern feels familiar. Think of class components or PropTypes. They stopped being the future long before they stopped working. That is probably the Pages Router’s path too. Discouraged for new apps but supported for existing apps.

The hybrid escape hatch

One of the nicest parts of this whole situation is that you do not have to migrate everything at once.

Next.js lets you run the App Router and Pages Router in the same application. That means you can move route by route instead of doing one huge rewrite.

The App Router takes precedence when routes overlap, so you can gradually migrate specific parts of your app while leaving the rest alone.

I did a write-up on how to serve the same route from Next.js App Router and Pages Router

So what should you actually do?

Here is where I’ve landed.

Starting a new Next.js project?

Use the App Router. That is where the ecosystem is going. It is where the docs, examples, tutorials, Vercel investment, React integration, and AI-generated answers are increasingly focused.

Maintaining a healthy Pages Router app?

Do not panic-rewrite. If your app works, your team is productive, and your architecture is not fighting you, there is no urgent reason to stop everything and migrate.

Building a long-lived product?

Have a migration plan, but make it boring and incrementally. Do it route by route. Start with isolated pages, new product areas, or parts of the app you already planned to redesign. The hybrid model exists for a reason, use it.

My plan

For my own project, I’m going to keep building on Pages Router + tRPC for now.

The docs are still maintained. There is no deprecation warning. The migration path is there when I need it and the Pages Router is too widely deployed for Vercel to break it without a very long heads-up.

If I build new sections that would clearly benefit from App Router features, I’ll consider using it there. If I eventually need to migrate the whole app, I’ll do it gradually.

But I’m not going to rewrite a working codebase just because the community has started using the word “legacy”

Because legacy does not always mean dead.

Sometimes it means stable, supported, boring, and battle-tested.

And honestly, for a lot of apps, that is exactly what you want.