Today, we are releasing version 8 of the npm CLI. A Semver-Major release of the CLI allows us to drop support for Node.js 10, making it easier for us to maintain npm through the LTS life cycle of Node.js 16.

With this change, most customers will automatically get the update when updating Node.js, and version 8 will be the default version installed when you run npm i -g npm. If you’re interested in reading more about this change, check out this breaking changes issue.