Are custom GPTs going away? What the retirement means for your instructions

Yes. OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs and moving creators to plugins, which bring reusable instructions, reference files and connected apps together. If you built a GPT to hold your instructions or your background, here's what happens to it, what carries over, and how to keep your context safe, based on OpenAI's own help pages.

OpenAI's dates and options differ by account and workspace, and its pages were updated this week. Follow the notice in your own account, and treat menu names as signposts.

The key dates

December 11, 2026: the standard retirement date. On the applicable date, custom GPTs and their GPT pages become inaccessible.
February 11, 2027: the later date for FedRAMP workspaces and workspaces with a qualifying, approved deferral. It doesn't apply to everyone.
Already in effect: new GPT creation and publishing aren't available on personal accounts (Free, Go, Plus and Pro). For affected Enterprise workspaces, new GPT creation ended on October 26, 2026.

Your GPT isn't gone yet. Existing GPTs stay usable until the retirement date, and you can still edit one you haven't migrated if your plan and permissions allow it. OpenAI says your existing conversations with custom GPTs stay accessible after retirement, with nothing you need to do to keep them.

What moves over when you migrate

When migration is available for your account, open My GPTs and choose Migrate to plugin for the GPT. According to OpenAI:

Instructions become a skill inside the new plugin.
Knowledge files are copied into the plugin's reference files.
Connected apps are added to the plugin as apps.
Not carried over: custom actions (anything that connects to another service through an action you set up) and the GPT's selected model.

Migration uses the GPT's latest published version, so drafts and unpublished edits don't transfer. Publishing doesn't mean sharing it publicly. After migration, the original GPT becomes read-only (and you can't delete it), so finish essential edits first and make future changes in the plugin. The new plugin starts private: people who used your GPT don't get access automatically.

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Don't see a migration option?

OpenAI says migration may not be available to your account yet, or plugin access may be turned off. Check the notice in your account and make sure you're signed in to the account or workspace where the GPT was created. If you only use someone else's GPT, you can't migrate it yourself: check its notice and the creator's guidance about a replacement.

Test the replacement before you rely on it

A migrated plugin may respond differently from your GPT. OpenAI suggests saving a few familiar prompts and comparing the results, including at least one harder case. Check that the plugin:

Picks the right skill and follows your instructions.
Uses the reference material you expect.
Gives complete answers or files in the format you need.
Has the tools and connections your workflow needs.

Once a plugin is installed, you can call it with an @ mention or from the + menu under More where supported, and ChatGPT may pick a relevant skill on its own when its description matches your request. It won't necessarily run on every request.

Save your instructions somewhere you control

If your GPT mainly existed to tell ChatGPT who you are and how you like answers, now is a good time to copy its instructions out into a document of your own before December 11. That's a personal context file: a short document about you that you write once and keep. It doesn't depend on any one feature, so you can paste the short version into ChatGPT's custom instructions, upload the full version to a ChatGPT Project, and reuse the same file in Claude, Gemini or Grok. See the ChatGPT setup guide for where custom instructions live. In any new chat, you can also paste this line with your file underneath:

Here is my personal context file. Read it and use it for everything in this chat. You don't need to summarize it back to me. Just reply "Got it" and wait for my first request.

[paste your context file here]

Sources: OpenAI Help Center, Custom GPT retirement and migration FAQ and Creating and editing GPTs.

Related guides

More guides on how AI assistants remember you:

Start free in 10 minutes. Grab the free Mini Context Card: a one-page fill-in sheet to write your first context file.
Get the free card Full Context Kit ($19 suggested) The full kit includes a fill-in template, a worked example, a step-by-step setup guide for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok, plus interview and monthly-refresh prompts.