The Ubuntu 26.10 beta, which had been due on 24 September, has been pushed back to 1 October.
Canonical’s Matthieu Clemenceau, announcing the delay, said “unforeseen infrastructure issues” require pushing the release back by one week.
The exact issue isn’t detailed, but Clemenceau did add that the company expects to resolve the cause shortly and that it doesn’t expect any impact on the final, stable Ubuntu 26.10 release date. That’s still set for 15 October, 2026.
While it’s only a bump of a week, it does mean the wider Ubuntu community gets less than two weeks to test the Stonking Stingray and its many changes.
Among them, a late switch from Linux 7.2 to the Linux 7.3 kernel, a complete set of Rust core utilities and an out-of-memory handling rejig that tries to prevent the desktop session from being sacrificed to free up memory.
The release also includes the GNOME 51 desktop, updated apps, a GTK4 port of the desktop icons extension (DING) that improves UI consistency and a new window tiling feature not unlike the one found on Windows 11.
So yeah; stop refreshing the Ubuntu CD image server and close the tab – the Stonking Stingray has proven to be a slippery so-and-so.
If set had set the weekend aside for testing, you needn’t fret: download an Ubuntu 26.10 daily build or stocking snapshot 4. Neither is “blessed” as a beta, but the images still shop with the same core package.
Install in a VM or on an external drive or spare partition and stay on top of updates. Come this time next week, you can say “beta? completed it mate”.