Server 2025 - Forced Upgrade

There have been reports in the IT press in the past week about Server 2022 being forcible upgraded to 2025 without the user knowing or agreeing to it. However, these reports indicated that it only happened with third party updating services and was because Microsoft had misclassified the upgrade as a security update.

I manage a number of 2022 servers (mostly VMs plus a few physical installs). Most of these use WSUS for updating, but there is one physical server which has local accounts and isn't domain joined, and updates directly from the Windows Update service (no update management system is in use). I logged into this one to check something yesterday, and while I was in there checked that it wasn't showing Server 2025 as pending, which it wasn't. It also wasn't even showing it as optional.

Logged into it again this morning, and it has forcible upgraded itself to Server 2025. So it's now unlicensed, and I don't know whether the software on it will work properly on Server 2025 (the server was well down my list for an upgrade, so I've not even researched it yet). There doesn't seem to be a roll back option. I could reinstall it, but there seems little point when it will probably just upgrade itself again.

I have tried to replicate the unwanted upgrade behaviour using a test VM, and I can't - that stays on 2022, and doesn't offer 2025 as even an optional upgrade.

And I've just received a response fro the supplier of the main software installed on this server, saying that Server 2025 is not yet supported. Great.

Anyone else experienced this?