On April 23, 2026, Canonical quietly did something remarkable. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS — codenamed Resolute Raccoon — shipped without a single Xorg desktop session. For the first time in Ubuntu's 22-year history, Wayland is the only show in town.

That's not the only headline. This release is the culmination of two full years of development, and the list of changes is, frankly, enormous. Let's walk through what matters most.

At a glance

Kernel : Linux 7.0

Desktop : GNOME 50

Support : 5–10 yrs

Released : Apr 23, 2026

Wayland is now the only option

GNOME 50 ships with a completely Wayland-based session. X11 support has been fully removed from GDM. XWayland is still present under the hood for legacy apps that need it, but your compositor is Wayland — no exceptions, no fallback toggle.

"This shift delivers smoother visuals, per-monitor scaling, native touch and gesture support, and removes screen tearing across platforms." — Canonical

For most users, this change is invisible. For anyone who had clung to X11 for screen-sharing, gaming, or niche tools — the ecosystem has finally caught up. Wayland is ready.

Security gets a serious overhaul

Three security upgrades stand out in this release. First, TPM-backed full-disk encryption is now enabled by default during a fresh install — no configuration required. Second, sudo-rs replaces the classic C-based sudo with a memory-safe Rust implementation. Third, Snap apps now prompt users for granular permissions — camera, microphone, file access — similar to what mobile users have expected for a decade.

The "Rustification" of Ubuntu's core utilities is a deliberate, multi-release project, and 26.04 marks a clear milestone in that journey.

A developer's dream toolchain

Every LTS refresh brings updated packages, but this one comes with an unusually rich set of first-class tools straight from the repos.

Python 3.14 GCC 15.2 OpenJDK 25 Rust 1.93.1 .NET 10 LLVM 21 NVIDIA CUDA (official) AMD ROCm

That last two are particularly notable. Ubuntu 26.04 is the first Ubuntu release to ship NVIDIA CUDA directly in its official software repositories. AI and ML workloads just got a much smoother on-ramp — no PPAs, no manual driver gymnastics.

Desktop refinements you'll actually notice

Beyond the big-ticket items, everyday use is noticeably polished. The default terminal is now Ptyxis — GPU-accelerated, tabbed, and built on GTK4. The video player switched from Totem to Showtime. GNOME System Monitor was replaced by Resources. GIMP jumped from 2.10 all the way to 3.2.

The Files app is faster, Calendar gained an attendee list, and screen recording can now be hardware-accelerated. Small things, but they add up to a desktop that feels genuinely fresh.

Should you upgrade?

If you're on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, direct upgrades won't be officially enabled until the 26.04.1 point release in August 2026 — Canonical's standard practice for LTS stability. You can upgrade manually before then, but waiting is the safer path for production machines.

Desktop users and developers can jump in now. The new toolchain versions and Wayland-first experience are worth it. Clean install or patient upgrade — either way, Resolute Raccoon is the most compelling Ubuntu LTS release in a long time.

Download Ubuntu 26.04 LTS free at ubuntu.com/download