New versions of Lightroom will only be available using a subscription service.
A perpetual licence will still be sold for Lr6, but this product won't have any new features or bug fixes after the end of this year.
If you want Lr and would like to manage your own files, you'll need to get Lightroom Classic CC.
Lightroom CC is basically a less featured product than Lr Classic CC, but with the capability of being able to edit your images across multiple devices (phone, tablet, computer).
Lightroom Classic CC will cost £10 a month - which it appears possible to prepay, but you're still only renting the software.

Below is a handy flowchart I nabbed from here to help you decide which new Lr you may (or may not) need :



I'm really not comfortable with the idea of renting my software, especially software that I'm using on something as important to me as my photography is.
I'm not likely to do any upgrading of the software until the new year anyway, so I'll just sit here getting splinters in my arse for the next few months, I think.

Here's the link to the Adobe Creative Cloud pricing page.

Mark

To a certain extent it depends on what your attitude was to keeping your software up to date.
The Photography plan also includes Photoshop CC and can be had for £9.98/mo. If you would have spent £120 annually keeping current with LR and PS then it’s no different really plus now you get some online storage as well.

Alternatively you bite the bullet and switch to a comparable set of perpetual software.

I’ve had the photography plan for a few years and it’s fine and I know everything is kept up to date. It arguably makes more sense for you mark as I’m confident you take a lot more photos than I do.

Lr6 was released in April 2015, so for that one-off payment I've had about 2.5 years worth of usage from that one payment. I don't recall how much exactly that cost, as I upgraded from the previous version, but for argument's sake let's say it was £100 (pretty sure it was less, but crap memory is crap).
£100 using the new subscription model would get me 10 months usage, so I'm out of pocket before the subscription period has even completed.
I won't be needing any other applications, or using the cloud storage that comes as part of the subscription - I manage my own files, my own way, with my own backups.

I can totally understand why Adobe has done this, it's a business and it needs money just like every other business, it just smarts a bit that, should I go with the CC model, I'll literally have to pay up to Adobe every year to keep full functionality of the software - and we're also at the mercy of Adobe raising the price when it sees fit.

I just really don't like the idea of having to learn a new application for image editing right from scratch.

Mark

They do seem to have taken their foot off the gas somewhat in terms of LR upgrades although I wonder if that’s in part because they are having to justify the subscription model they’ve adopted for the rest of CS.
They made a big play of denying that the subs model would mean they’d get lazy and not bother to develop the apps. PS has certainly been seeing annual updates as a CC app. If there isn’t a lot of competition for LR then they don’t have a lot of incentive to bust a gut improving it.
If that’s what’s going on the the move to the subs only model for LR could be a good thing in terms of development. Only time will tell of course.

Obviously, that’s not much help if you’re mulling a switch to a different platform now.

I know several people who've moved away from LR to something called Capture One. I don't know anything about it to be honest except that they are happy to have switched.

I got a copy of Capture One when I bought a Leica D-Lux 3 years ago. It was the only application that could handled its RAW format at the time. It was actually pretty good, but I was already using Apple’s Aperture for everything else, so use stopped when Apple supported the camera.

It was a pretty nice piece of software, and is something I’d actually invest in when Aperture eventually drops off the conveyor belt of Mac OS updates. Someone else I know, who’s very, very picky about his software is very keen on it.

I did try asking CaptureOne about how to handle a migration from Aperture to their software when Aperture’s EOL was announced, but I got no reply from them, which was disappointing.