Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for dynamic determination of retention periods for digital content. Metadata is generated for instances of digital content including an access pattern of the digital content by a user of the computing device, attributes of the digital content, and a retention period during which the digital content stored is retained in the storage. A machine learning module is trained with input comprising the metadata for instances of the digital content to produce the retention period of the digital content. Input, comprising metadata determined from digital content, received after training the machine learning module, is provided to the machine learning module to produce an output retention period for the digital content received after the training. The output retention period is used to determine when to delete the digital received after the training content from the storage.