As you saw in the PEP, the policy is that a Python minor version (X.Y.0) only supports those Windows versions that are in support at the time of release. Windows 8.0 had a special deal, folks were forced to move to 8.1 and support for 8.0 was ended January 12, 2016, so that means nothing since 3.5 would support Windows 8.

I'll leave it to others whether that actually needs an explicit note.

@zooba, thoughts?

Support for Windows 8 ended early 2016: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-8

Windows 7 ended early 2020.

Windows 8.1 is still going, so it's the minimum for 3.9, 3.10 and 3.11. The minimum for 3.12 will be Windows 10 (and likely "Windows 10+updates" since it's practically impossible (and certainly unsafe) to maintain old versions of Win10 for testing).

so that means nothing since 3.5 would support Windows 8.

python/cpython#21656 seems to be the PR that officially removed 8.0 support, and it seems to have only been backported as far back as 3.9

Whilst I'm not familiar with the topic, I'd guess that Windows 8.0 would have supported almost everything that Windows 7 supported, meaning it wouldn't have made sense to drop Windows 8.0 support before Windows 7