Canonical launches Ubuntu Core 26

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Ubuntu Core 26 introduces precise Linux builds, optimized OTA updates, live kernel patching, and enhanced hardware-backed protection for mission-critical deployments.

May 7, 2026

Today, Canonical announced the general availability of Ubuntu Core 26, its minimal, immutable operating system with up to 15 years of security maintenance.

Ubuntu Core 26 brings key system improvements for mission-critical operations and low-latency AI workloads, through reduced installation times, 90% smaller OTA updates, and precision-led builds via Chisel. As with prior releases, every component is a sandboxed, cryptographically-signed snap, creating a measured boot chain where only verified software runs. With this new long-term supported (LTS) release, Ubuntu Core remains your trusted Linux platform for mission-critical systems, helping you meet requirements for the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) while enabling securely-designed, verifiable, and private AI deployments built on deep software traceability and hardware-based trust.

Ten years ago, Ubuntu Core pioneered a new OS security model, where every component is strictly confined, transactionally updated, and independently verifiable. Today, that approach is reflected in emerging industry standards. With Ubuntu Core 26, we continue to deliver the foundation that critical infrastructure operators need to meet the Cyber Resilience Act, run attested, immutable edge AI workloads, and manage devices securely at scale.

Jon Seager, VP of Ubuntu Engineering at Canonical

Build your custom Ubuntu Core 26 image<br>Try pre-built Ubuntu Core images >

Faster from installation to update

For critical infrastructure operators managing large fleets of devices over long lifecycles, the cost of software updates and the time required for device provisioning and image installation quickly compound. Ubuntu Core 26 delivers significant improvements across each of these areas.

Ubuntu Core 26 sets a new efficiency benchmark for over-the-air updates. An improved snap-delta format reduces update sizes between 50% and 90% for most snaps. Updates to the Core base snaps drop from 16MB to just 1.5MB in size. These gains are paired with initramfs-based installations that bypass redundant reboots by default, reducing installation time.

Scaling AI to the extreme edge requires every millisecond of performance and every byte of bandwidth to be used effectively. By integrating Ubuntu Core with our RZ family of MPUs, our joint customers will benefit from accelerated boot times and a significantly reduced base image footprint. These optimizations will enable them to deploy sophisticated AI workloads on highly resource constrained hardware without compromising speed or security.

Mohammed Dogar, Vice President, Embedded Processing Product Group at Renesas

An image of the Renesas RZ/V2L Evaluation Board Kit<br>A new era of precision builds with Chisel

Ubuntu Core 26 introduces a new Chisel-based build system that brings precise composition and transforms how future Core base snaps will be assembled. It relies on Canonical’s release-specific package slice definitions, enforcing explicit, traceable dependencies. As a result, every file in the filesystem can be attributed to its originating slice and source package, improving the accuracy of integrity checks and vulnerability triage. This contrasts with approaches like Yocto builds, where provenance and dependency closure are largely implicit in layered recipes and post-processing. The new build system also contributes to a 7% reduction in base image size.

Ubuntu Core at the edge along with Elementary’s secure cloud services, has enabled factories belonging to some of the largest Fortune 500 companies to take advantage of AI-based vision solutions that provide tremendous value and for the first time bridge the IT/OT networking barrier. The ability to verify every component in Ubuntu Core back to its source, with full transparency and traceability, forms a critical foundation for building verifiably private AI in highly regulated environments.

Nathaniel Black, Senior Director of DevOps and Security at Elementary

Elementary’s end-to-end automated inspection hardware and AI controller interface<br>Finally, Ubuntu Core 26 moves u-boot...