This floor moves roughly once a year and Google enforces it at the Play Console upload step -- get it wrong and the release is blocked before any review happens.
App update requirements
| Android OS version (API level) | When are new app and app update submissions required to target this API level? | | | --- | --- | --- | | New apps | App updates | | | Android 16 (API level 36)* | August 31, 2026 | August 31, 2026 | | Android 15(API level 35) | August 31, 2025 | August 31, 2025 |
*Developers will be able to request an extension to November 1, 2026.
Tip: For technical guidance on how to change your app’s target API level to meet these requirements, refer to the migration guide.
It moves. The table above is quoted live from Google's own page, fetched 2026-10-12 and re-fetched weekly by ShipCheck's corpus refresh -- not typed in by hand once and left to go stale. A blog post or Stack Overflow answer citing "the current requirement" is very often citing last year's number.
`targetSdkVersion` lives in `android/build.gradle` for a bare or prebuilt project. In a managed Expo project without a checked-in `android/` directory, set it via the `expo-build-properties` config plugin instead -- editing `android/build.gradle` directly gets silently overwritten on the next `expo prebuild`.
Set `targetSdkVersion` to the current floor for new apps shown in the table above. If you're on a managed Expo workflow, do this through `expo-build-properties` in app.json instead, and rebuild.
A Claude Code plugin for React Native and Expo. Reads your project and store listing, checks them against the live App Store Review Guidelines and Google Play policies -- the same corpus quoted on this page -- and tells you the clause, the reviewer's likely wording, and the fix.
/plugin marketplace add BakerVentures/shipcheck
Free scan on every app. See pricing →