Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS is out. Canonical published the first point release of “Resolute Raccoon” on 27 August 2026, with refreshed installation media so a new install pulls down fewer updates afterwards. For anyone still running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, this is normally the moment the upgrade prompt appears — but Canonical has said that offer is being held back for a few weeks, and it has told users why.
Why Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS matters if you are on 24.04
Canonical’s own desktop upgrade tutorial spells out the convention: users on a long-term support release are prompted to upgrade only once the first point release of the following LTS is available. That is why 24.04 LTS machines have sat quietly for four months while 26.04 has been shipping since April — the prompt was always going to wait for 26.04.1.
It is waiting a little longer. The release announcement from the Ubuntu Release Team says 24.04 LTS users will be offered the automatic upgrade through Update Manager:
a couple of weeks following this release after some planned backports to address regressions in a recent version of rust-coreutils
That is candid, and holding the offer back is the right call — routing a large installed base of working desktops onto an upgrade while regressions in a core utilities package are still being addressed would be worse than a short wait. It also means a couple of weeks is the only timing on offer; the announcement attaches no date to it. If you are on 24.04 LTS and nothing has appeared in Software Updater yet, that is expected behaviour rather than a fault on your machine.
What is actually fixed in the point release
A point release is not a feature update. It is the accumulated stable-updates stream rolled into fresh media, and the 26.04.1 changelog is dominated by kernel and hardware-enablement work on the 7.0.0 kernel series. Items worth knowing about:
- Secure Boot fix — the intel-ipu7 and intel-ipu7-isys modules were shipping unsigned in recent Resolute kernels, which broke Secure Boot systems.
- Qualcomm X1E audio — speaker overdrive was causing a hardware protection shutdown.
- Nvidia drivers — new upstream releases 580.159.03 and 595.71.05, plus a fix for a suspend crash.
- Bluetooth — BlueZ fixes for AVRCP volume control breaking when AVRCP connected before AVDTP, and a GATT cache issue.
- Wi-Fi firmware — the missing rtl8192eefw.bin firmware for RTL8192EE PCIe cards was added back.
The flavours moved in step: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Cinnamon and Edubuntu all have 26.04.1 builds. One thing to note before you pick one — Canonical supports the main desktop, server, cloud and Core images for five years from the original 26.04 release, taking them to April 2031, while the remaining flavours get three.
What to do now
Whenever you do move, the documented desktop route is the same one Canonical has always used. Its tutorial asks you to bring the current system fully up to date with sudo apt update followed by sudo apt upgrade, and to back up your data before starting. Then you launch Software Updater from the application menu; it checks for updates and prompts you to upgrade if it finds a more recent Ubuntu release, and Canonical notes that if no prompt appears, either you are on the latest version or upgrades to the newest release have not yet been enabled — which is precisely the state 24.04 machines are in right now. On Server edition and cloud images the documented command is sudo do-release-upgrade instead.
Older installs cannot jump straight across. Ubuntu’s release notes are explicit that a machine on 22.04 LTS or 25.04 has to reach 24.04 LTS or 25.10 first before 26.04 LTS is reachable. If you are coming from 25.10, we covered that upgrade path and the raised hardware requirements in detail in July — 26.04 asks for 6GB of RAM and 25GB of free storage, up from the previous cycle, and that catches older low-memory laptops.
For most 24.04 LTS users, though, the sensible move is simply to leave it. Standard security maintenance for 24.04 LTS runs to May 2029, the upgrade is coming to you automatically, and and Canonical has scheduled that offer to arrive after the backports it has told you about.
Sources: Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS release announcement, Changes in Ubuntu 26.04.1, Canonical’s desktop upgrade tutorial
