Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS Is About to Be Released – Upgrade Test Successful
Daniel Nashed – 27 August 2026 19:58:59
Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS is about to be released. The first point release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is scheduled for today, August 27, 2026.
At the time of writing, the Ubuntu 26.04.1 ISO images are not yet available and the regular LTS upgrade path from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS has not yet been enabled.
However, the Ubuntu 26.04.1 updates are already available in the package repositories. Existing Ubuntu 26.04 installations can already be updated to the 26.04.1 package level.
I tested this first with an Ubuntu Docker container and then went one step further and successfully upgraded an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Proxmox LXC container to Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS.
Ubuntu 26.04.1 Updates Are Already Available
Existing Ubuntu 26.04 systems can already be updated normally.
A simple way to verify this is with the official Ubuntu 26.04 Docker image:
docker run --rm -it ubuntu:latest
Inside the container:
apt update
apt full-upgrade -y
cat /etc/os-release
After installing the available updates, the container reports:
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS"
Testing an Upgrade from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
The next question was more interesting: Can we already upgrade an existing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS installation to Ubuntu 26.04.1?
For this test, I used an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS LXC container running on Proxmox.
This is a perfect environment for an early upgrade test because the complete container can easily be snapshotted and rolled back.
My test container has CT ID 142.
First, I created a snapshot on the Proxmox host:
pct snapshot 142 before-ubuntu-26
The available snapshots can be displayed with:
pct listsnapshot 142
And if required, the complete test can be rolled back:
pct rollback 142 before-ubuntu-26
Regular LTS Upgrade Is Not Enabled Yet
After bringing the Ubuntu 24.04 installation up to date, I checked for the new LTS release:
do-release-upgrade -c
At the time of testing, the result was:
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
There is no development version of an LTS available.
To upgrade to the latest non-LTS development release
set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades.
This means the regular Ubuntu 24.04 LTS → Ubuntu 26.04 LTS upgrade path has not yet been enabled.
That is not unexpected while the 26.04.1 release process is still in progress.
Testing the Upgrade Anyway
Because this was a lab container with a Proxmox snapshot, I decided to test the development upgrade option:
do-release-upgrade -d
The -d option tells do-release-upgrade to also consider the development release.
The upgrader found Resolute, the Ubuntu 26.04 release, and started the upgrade.
The upgrade from Ubuntu 24.04 completed successfully.
After rebooting the container:
cat /etc/os-release
shows:
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS"
So we successfully upgraded an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS installation to the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS package level.
Current Status
At the time of writing, the situation looks like this:
Ubuntu 26.04 -> 26.04.1 update Available
24.04 -> 26.04.1 with -d Tested successfully
Ubuntu 26.04.1 ISO Not yet available
Regular 24.04 LTS -> 26.04 upgrade Not yet enabled
Ubuntu 26.04.1 is clearly very close to final publication. Existing Ubuntu 26.04 installations can already update to the 26.04.1 package level, and the release upgrade from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS also worked without issues in my Proxmox LXC test when using do-release-upgrade -d.
For production systems running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, I would still wait until Canonical officially enables the normal LTS upgrade path.
There is little reason to use do-release-upgrade -d on a production server just to get the new release a little earlier.
But for a snapshot-backed lab system, it was a good opportunity to test the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS → 26.04.1 LTS upgrade ahead of the official rollout.
So far, both the regular 26.04 update and the 24.04 release upgrade look good.
Ubuntu is one of the few distributions supporting major release updates inline.
This is pretty awsome and I used it for earlier releases already.
The upgrade option is available as soon the .1 release ships as this pre-check test showed.
Once available the -c option should work.
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