The observation of neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay would establish both the violation of lepton number conservation and the Majorana nature of the neutrino, as well as constrain the neutrinomass hierarchy and scale. GERDA reached an important milestone in the search for 0νββ decay with ⁷⁶Ge by achieving a half-life sensitivity of 10²⁶ years. This is made possible by the background-free conditions in GERDA and by a factor of two increase in exposure since the last data release in 2017. New results will be presented together with the details of background reduction techniques.