Updated November 7, 2026: added the 26.04.1 point release, the September 29 opening of upgrades from 24.04 LTS and a version table, all checked today against Canonical’s release notes and announcements.
Canonical’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release, codenamed Resolute Raccoon, arrived on April 23, 2026 (Canonical announcement). For someone coming from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, four changes touch daily work: sudo and the core command-line tools are now Rust implementations, the Ubuntu Desktop session runs on Wayland only, TPM-backed full-disk encryption is a supported installer option, and NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm install from Ubuntu’s own repositories. The first point release, 26.04.1, followed on August 27, and the upgrade path from 24.04 LTS opened on September 29.
Where the release stands on November 7
| Milestone | Date | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | April 23, 2026 | New installs and upgrades from 25.10 (release notes) |
| Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS | August 27, 2026 | Refreshed install media with security updates published up to August 25 (announcement, changelog) |
| Upgrades from 24.04 LTS enabled | September 29, 2026 | Offered in Update Manager, rolled out progressively; do-release-upgrade works without the -d flag (announcement) |
The month between the point release and the upgrade offer was deliberate. The 26.04.1 announcement held the 24.04 upgrade back for “planned backports to address regressions in a recent version of rust-coreutils”. Version 0.10 of that package reached 26.04 as a phased update on September 21, with fixes for 15 CVEs (Ubuntu Discourse). A machine still on 22.04 LTS cannot jump straight to 26.04; it has to go through 24.04 first (release notes). Support dates are kept in our Ubuntu 26.04 LTS lifecycle entry, and the difference between LTS and six-month releases is covered in Ubuntu LTS vs interim releases.
What changes coming from 24.04 LTS
Canonical’s summary for LTS users lists these version jumps for a machine moving between the two LTS releases:
| Component | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS |
|---|---|---|
| Linux kernel (GA stack) | 6.8 | 7.0 |
| GNOME desktop | 46 | 50 |
| systemd | 255 | 259 |
| Python | 3.12 | 3.14 |
| GCC / glibc | 14 / 2.39 | 15.2 / 2.43 |
| Rust toolchain | 1.75 | 1.93 |
| OpenSSH | 9.6p1 | 10.2p1 |
Default sudo | original sudo (now packaged as sudo.ws) | sudo-rs |
| Core utilities | GNU coreutils | rust-coreutils, with cp, mv and rm still from GNU |
| Initial ramdisk | initramfs-tools | Dracut |
| Time sync on new installs | systemd-timesyncd | Chrony |
Security: what is finished and what is a preview
The Rust tools are the change most likely to surface in scripts. sudo-rs is now the default sudo provider. The core utilities come from rust-coreutils, but the release notes say the package is “not fully compatible yet”, so the GNU versions stay installed under a gnu prefix (for example gnuls), and a documented apt command switches the whole set back to GNU. Because of unresolved bugs, cp, mv and rm still come from GNU. Rust removes some classes of memory errors; it does not make the operating system free of vulnerabilities.
TPM-backed full-disk encryption is generally available in the installer. The disk unlocks automatically at boot when the Trusted Platform Module confirms the system has not been tampered with, and a PIN or passphrase can be added. The release notes link to a list of remaining limitations. Canonical’s September 29 overview adds that the Security Center now shows encryption state, recovery options and Secure Boot status after deployment. Application permission prompting has a different status: the April announcement calls it a preview.
Network cryptography also moved. OpenSSH 10.2 offers the hybrid post-quantum key exchange mlkem768x25519-sha256 by default and warns when a connection falls back to a key agreement that is not post-quantum. OpenSSL adds ML-KEM, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA.
Desktop, kernel and GPU support
The Ubuntu Desktop session now runs only on Wayland, because GNOME Shell can no longer run on X.org. Other desktops, such as KDE, Xfce and MATE, can still start an X.org session. New default apps replace older ones: Papers for PDFs, Loupe for images, Ptyxis as the terminal and Resources as the system monitor. Canonical’s recommended desktop hardware is a 2 GHz dual-core processor, 6 GB of RAM and 25 GB of free storage.
Ubuntu 26.04 is the first Ubuntu release to ship NVIDIA CUDA in its own repositories, and AMD ROCm is there too. Livepatch now covers Arm64 servers, so supported kernel fixes can be applied without a reboot, and the real-time kernel is free in the main archive.
Checks before upgrading a working machine
- Shell scripts: run them against rust-coreutils, or switch the machine to GNU coreutils before the upgrade if a flag misbehaves.
- Old init scripts: 26.04 is the last release whose systemd still runs System V service scripts, and cgroup v1 support is gone.
- Desktop sessions: anyone relying on an Xorg-only Ubuntu Desktop session needs to test their apps under Wayland before upgrading.
- Time sync: Chrony replaces systemd-timesyncd only on new installs; the release notes give the two commands to switch an upgraded machine.
Our guide to software dependency risk explains why each of these needs testing across the applications that use a system, not just on the operating system itself.
