Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ‘Resolute Raccoon’ was released on 23 April 2026, the 11th long-term supported Ubuntu release. The main edition gets five years of security updates (until April 2031), extendable to ten via Ubuntu Pro. Official flavors like Kubuntu and Lubuntu get three years. System requirements have bumped up slightly: a 2 GHz dual-core CPU, 6 GB RAM (up from 4 GB), and 25 GB of storage.

Linux kernel 7.0 and hardware support

The release ships with Linux kernel 7.0, which adds support for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake), full Intel Core Ultra Xe2 and Arc Battlemage GPU support, and the NTSYNC driver — a kernel-level improvement that meaningfully speeds up Windows game compatibility through Wine and Proton. RISC-V RVA23 baseline support is also included, and Canonical Livepatch now extends to Arm64 servers for rebootless kernel patching.

Mesa 26.0.x handles GPU drivers, with NVIDIA 595.x series as the default. NVIDIA Dynamic Boost is enabled by default on laptops in Kubuntu. Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) is on by default, and hardware-accelerated video encoding is available for remote desktop sessions.

Wayland is now the only option

This is the first Ubuntu LTS to ship without an Xorg desktop session. GNOME 50 drops X11 from GDM entirely — Wayland is the only supported session. Kubuntu follows the same path, dropping X11 session support completely. If you rely on software that only works under Xorg, check compatibility before upgrading.

Fractional scaling is now stable rather than experimental. HDR support has improved. The overall Wayland experience is noticeably more mature than it was in 24.04.

New default apps

Five apps replace older defaults on the GNOME desktop:

Ptyxis replaces the old terminal
Loupe replaces the image viewer
Papers replaces the document viewer
Showtime replaces Totem for video playback
Resources replaces GNOME System Monitor

Several of these are Rust rewrites. On the removal side: Software & Updates, Startup Applications, and Google Drive integration in Nautilus are gone.

Bundled app versions: Firefox 149, LibreOffice 25.8 (26.2.2 in Kubuntu/Lubuntu), Thunderbird 140, GIMP 3.0.

Security and encryption

TPM-backed full-disk encryption is now generally available rather than experimental. It uses TPM 2.0 hardware to handle key storage, so you don’t need to enter a passphrase on every boot while still getting real encryption.

OpenSSH 10.2 adds post-quantum cryptography support. A new Security Center app gives users granular control over Snap permissions. Confidential computing support covers Intel TDX and AMD SEV. Dual-boot alongside BitLocker-encrypted Windows is better supported than before.

Rust-based system components

Several low-level tools have been replaced with Rust implementations:

sudo-rs is now the default sudo provider instead of the classic C implementation. It’s not fully compatible with every sudo edge case, so if you have complex sudo configurations, test before upgrading.
uutils coreutils replaces GNU coreutils in some contexts
Rust kernel drivers are included for memory safety improvements

AI/ML and developer tooling

NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm are now available directly via apt from official repositories, which removes a significant friction point for machine learning workloads.

On the developer tooling side, the release includes GCC 15.2 as the default compiler, Rust 1.93 with cargo-auditable support, Golang 1.26 as default, OpenJDK 25, and an official .NET snap with multi-version management. Canonical has also added “devpacks” for Spring and Go that bundle framework tools into single-command installs — the goal being to reduce onboarding from multi-page setup guides to a few commands.

Desktop quality-of-life changes

Refreshed Yaru theme with new folder icons
Grouped notifications
A Wellbeing panel for screen time tracking
Battery charging limits
Text size slider for accessibility
Improved APT command-line output and new subcommands
Expanded Deb package management in App Center
A new Telemetry panel (opt-in)
Dracut replaces initramfs-tools for faster boot times
Nautilus file manager has significant improvements
Authd for cloud identity provider authentication (Entra ID, Google IAM, OIDC)

Kubuntu and Lubuntu specifics

Kubuntu 26.04 ships KDE Plasma 6.6, Qt 6.10.2, and KDE Frameworks 6.24.0. It adopts sudo-rs and drops X11 entirely.

Lubuntu 26.04 marks the project’s 30th release, shipping LXQt 2.3. It keeps X11 for now — a Wayland session isn’t included in the ISO but may arrive via PPA later. LXQt Panel’s Desktop Switcher gains Wayland compositor support, PCManFM-Qt adds a ‘Safely Remove’ option, and VA-API hardware-accelerated video is enabled by default.

Upgrade paths

Direct upgrades from 24.04 LTS are delayed until the 26.04.1 point release in July. Users on 25.10 will see an upgrade prompt soon. Anyone on an older release needs to upgrade to 24.04 LTS or 25.10 first.

A few other low-level changes worth knowing before upgrading: apt-key has been removed, cgroup v1 support is dropped, and this is the last release supporting SysV init scripts.