Backward compatibility with event-sourcing

Question

How do you stay backward compatible with event-sourcing? Let say you release a version that has one kind of event, let call it X. You know how to handle that event in all the systems that extracts the events from the event source. In a later release you make a change to event X or delete it, how do you stay backward compatible with that?

To have a fully functional system you need to be able to handle the old event as the same time as you need to handle the updated version. Or if you delete that event type, then you will be stuck with code that is only there to handle legacy events which in my head can be a little bit messy in the long run.