Linkerd upgrade from 2.14.10 to edge-25.8.1

Hi all,

We are in a multicloud setup currently using Linkerd 2.14.10. We are now looking into upgrading, and for various reasons the desired version is edge-25.8.1 (licensing for one part).

The documentation states:

it is usually safe for the control plane to be ahead of the data plane by up to a full version

Since edge-25.8.1 corresponding release is 2.18, does that mean we need to approach this in 4 steps, meaning only do the update as a one version increment until we reach the required version?
I have looked the release notes and to be quite honest I could not figure that out.

Thanks!