Vertex AI model deprecations

How Vertex AI retires models

Google now documents the Vertex AI Gemini and embedding models under Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, on its model versions and lifecycle page, which lists each model’s retirement date. Google says a retirement date may be extended, but it won’t be moved earlier than the date listed.

Some models are promised for at least 12 months after their release. The others stay active until a replacement is released and a retirement date is announced, even once the replacement has launched. When Google schedules a retirement, it posts a fixed date that gives at least 45 days to migrate. Calls to a model past its retirement date get errors; Google’s quick fix is to point the application at the recommended upgrade, test the features that matter and deploy as usual.

Next shutdowns: gemini-3.6-flash on November 19, 2026, claude-sonnet-4-5 on November 30, 2026, gemini-live-2.5-flash-native-audio on December 13, 2026.

What Vertex AI answers a call to deepseek-ocr-maas since October 21, 2026, as recorded from real responses:

{"error":{"code":404,"message":"Publisher model `projects/{project}/locations/{region}/publishers/google/models/deepseek-ocr-maas` was not found or your project does not have access to it. Ensure you are using a valid model name and that the model is available in the specified region.","status":"NOT_FOUND"}}

Policy read on Vertex AI's pages on November 5, 2026. Okapi last checked Vertex AI's model pages on November 6, 2026.

• Google Cloud model versions and lifecycle docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/model-versions