OpenAI announced that on February 13, 2026 it will retire several older ChatGPT models, including GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini and OpenAI o4-mini. If you use the API you won’t see changes for now, but in the ChatGPT interface you’ll watch these models disappear.
What changes and when
The retirement date is February 13, 2026. This joins a previous cleanup that also removed versions of GPT-5 (Instant and Thinking). In practice, most users already migrated to GPT-5.2, and OpenAI says only 0.1% of users still choose GPT-4o each day.
What does this mean for you? If you open ChatGPT and were using one of those models, you’ll need to pick alternatives before or after the date. If you work with the API, OpenAI clarifies there are no changes at the moment.
Why these models are being retired
It’s not just cleanup for the sake of cleaning. GPT-4o was especially interesting: they retired it, brought it back after feedback, and then learned how people were actually using it. Some users preferred its conversational style and warmth for tasks like creative ideation.
