Ubuntu 26.10 “Stonking Stingray,” scheduled for release on October 15, is now on the roadmap and, according to Canonical, will also serve as an early development step toward Ubuntu 28.04 LTS and will include GNOME 51 (which will be released in mid-September).
26.10 will also continue the transition from dbus-daemon to dbus-broker as part of Canonical’s desktop stack modernization. Moreover, Stonking Stingray is emerging as a significant release for RISC-V, delivering a complete Ubuntu Desktop experience on RVA23-compliant hardware.
Regarding multimedia support, Ubuntu 26.10 will feature GStreamer 1.30 with new Rust-based plugins. Canonical is also improving codec discovery and installation guidance to provide clearer information when proprietary codecs are required.
Another core component, the App Center, is shaping to be package-agnostic, presenting applications consistently regardless of packaging format. Search, ratings, categories, and metadata will be unified, while users who prefer to select packaging formats will retain that option.
Driver management is being improved, too, with better metadata, clearer presentation, enhanced sorting, and maturity indicators for available drivers.
At the same time, Canonical is developing a simplified installation process with safer defaults and guided workflows for partitioning and storage. Additionally, a new first-boot onboarding experience will move personalization and system setup to a dedicated post-installation flow.
However, these installer and onboarding changes are planned for Ubuntu 28.04 LTS, with design work taking place during the 26.10 development cycle.
Another interesting planned addition is that Canonical is exploring voice interaction using an on-device speech-to-text engine as a native desktop input method.
On the enterprise integration side, Ubuntu 26.10 will advance authd development by adding Microsoft password and MFA authentication, including approval requests via Microsoft Authenticator. Canonical also plans to support deriving UID and GID values directly from identity provider attributes to maintain consistent file ownership and permissions across managed systems.
On top of that, administrators will be able to disable local password authentication for remotely managed accounts, enforcing authentication policies through the identity provider.
Last but not least, NetworkManager will support PKCS#11 and smart-card authentication, enabling VPN authentication through hardware tokens such as YubiKeys using standard desktop interfaces.
For additional details, refer to the 26.10 roadmap on Ubuntu Discourse.
