Speculation: Windows 10 end of life's in 2025. It's entirely possible that by the time that year rolls around, they throw in some backwards compatibility with some asterisks around performance.
Right now, Microsoft is not officially supporting the older processors but Windows 11 runs on 7th gen intel processors without any real issues except that it's a little slower than how it would run with Windows 10. But no work stopping issues at all if you were to run it yourself. I believe Microsoft even has a published way to do it if I'm not mistaken. It's manual and a little messy for now, with some asterisks around risks for automated updates, but it works.
Given all of this and MS's outlook towards backward compatibility I can see them eventually allowing older generations to upgrade after agreeing to some risks/performance degradation.
Right now, Microsoft is not officially supporting the older processors but Windows 11 runs on 7th gen intel processors without any real issues except that it's a little slower than how it would run with Windows 10. But no work stopping issues at all if you were to run it yourself. I believe Microsoft even has a published way to do it if I'm not mistaken. It's manual and a little messy for now, with some asterisks around risks for automated updates, but it works.
Given all of this and MS's outlook towards backward compatibility I can see them eventually allowing older generations to upgrade after agreeing to some risks/performance degradation.