How to Upgrade Ubuntu to 26.04 LTS: Steps, Checks and Changes

Updated: 10 October 2026 · Applies to: Ubuntu release upgrades from 24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS (26.04.1) with do-release-upgrade (ubuntu-release-upgrader 26.04.25), Ubuntu Server and Desktop

To upgrade Ubuntu to a new release, first install every update for the release you have, then run the release upgrader:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo do-release-upgrade

On Ubuntu 24.04 LTS this moves you to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon). Note that apt upgrade, apt full-upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade only update packages within your current release; none of them changes 24.04 into 26.04. That is the job of do-release-upgrade. For everyday package updates, see how to update all packages on Linux safely.

Update or upgrade? The commands compared

sudo apt update refreshes the package lists. It installs nothing.
apt list --upgradable shows what can be updated. On our 24.04 test system it listed two packages, for example libaudit1/noble-updates 1:3.1.2-2.1ubuntu0.1 amd64 [upgradable from: 1:3.1.2-2.1build1.1].
sudo apt upgrade installs those updates (and new packages they depend on) but never removes a package; an update that would need a removal is held back.
sudo apt full-upgrade, and the older sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, also remove installed packages when that is needed to upgrade the system as a whole. Despite the name, “dist-upgrade” does not move you to a new Ubuntu release.
sudo do-release-upgrade upgrades to the next Ubuntu release (the release upgrade this article covers).

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS at a glance

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, code name Resolute Raccoon, was released on 23 April 2026; the first point release, 26.04.1, followed on 27 August 2026. Canonical gives it five years of standard security updates (to 2031) and ten years with Ubuntu Pro’s Expanded Security Maintenance. Not sure which version you run? See how to check your Ubuntu version.

Which upgrade paths work

24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS: available now. Ubuntu offers LTS to LTS upgrades only after the first point release, so this path opened with 26.04.1.
22.04 LTS: you cannot skip a release. Upgrade to 24.04 first (our 22.04.5 test system was offered New release '24.04.5 LTS' available.), then to 26.04.
25.10: its support ended in July 2026; upgrade it to 26.04 straight away.
26.04 itself: with the default setting Prompt=lts in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades you are only offered the next LTS. Our upgraded test system said There is no development version of an LTS available. Interim releases (Ubuntu 26.10 is planned for October 2026, with nine months of support) are offered only with Prompt=normal.

Before you upgrade

Back up the server and its databases, and take a snapshot if your platform offers one. Ubuntu’s own guide starts with this step.
Read the release notes for the software you run. Between 24.04 and 26.04, MySQL goes from 8.0 to 8.4, PHP from 8.3 to 8.5 and Dovecot from 2.3 to 2.4, and all of them change configuration options.
Install all updates, including phased ones, as Ubuntu’s upgrade guide recommends, and reboot if /run/reboot-required exists:
```
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade -o APT::Get::Always-Include-Phased-Updates=true
```
Check free disk space with df -h. The upgrader also checks /, /usr, /var and /boot before it changes anything, and aborts with Not enough free disk space if one is too full.
Make sure you can reach the server without SSH, in case the connection drops: on a VPS, the console in the client area (access your VPS with VNC).

Upgrade Ubuntu 24.04 to 26.04 step by step

Check that the upgrade is offered. Our 24.04.5 test printed:

sudo do-release-upgrade -c
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
New release '26.04.1 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

Start the upgrade:
```
sudo do-release-upgrade
```
Over SSH it asks Continue running under SSH? If you continue, it starts an additional SSH server on port 1022 so you can reconnect if the main one fails (open that port in your firewall only if you need it). The text upgrader also runs itself inside GNU screen when screen is installed; after a dropped connection, log in again and run sudo screen -d -r to get back to it.
Answer Do you want to start the upgrade? after reading the summary of packages to install, upgrade and remove.
When asked about a configuration file you changed, the default answer keeps your version. Look at the differences first (D at the plain text prompt; some packages show a menu with an option to show the differences instead), note the file and merge the new options after the upgrade.
At Remove obsolete packages? choose Remove unless you know you still need one of the listed packages. In our test it removed old libraries such as python3.12.
Reboot when the upgrader says Restart required.

Lab example (not a measure of real server timings): a minimal Ubuntu 24.04 container on our test machine upgraded 148 packages, installed 23 new ones and downloaded about 61 MB in roughly nine minutes. A real server with web, database and mail software has far more packages and takes longer. The upgrader writes its logs to /var/log/dist-upgrade/ (main.log, apt.log, apt-term.log), which is the first place to look if something fails.

After the upgrade

Confirm the new release. Our test system printed:
```
lsb_release -a
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS
Release:	26.04
Codename:	resolute
```
After the reboot, uname -r shows the new kernel: 26.04 moves the generic kernel from 6.8 to 7.0 (the archive offered linux-image-generic 7.0.0-38 in our test).
Check the package sources. The upgrader rewrote /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources from noble to resolute. According to Ubuntu, third-party repositories and PPAs are disabled during the upgrade: re-enable the ones you need once they publish packages for 26.04.
Test your services (web server, PHP, database, mail) and read the log of anything that does not start.

Changes in 26.04 that matter on a server

sudo-rs is the default sudo. According to the release notes, the original sudo is renamed sudo.ws and the sudo-ldap package is removed.
Rust coreutils. Commands such as ls and chown now come from uutils (chown (uutils coreutils) 0.10.0 on our upgraded system), while the GNU versions stay available with a gnu prefix, for example gnuls. If a script breaks, the release notes give a way back: sudo apt install coreutils-from-gnu coreutils-from-uutils-.
cgroup v1 is gone. systemd 259 removed the legacy layouts, so old container tools that need cgroup v1 will not run.
/tmp is a tmpfs (held in memory) by default, so large temporary files, for example from backups, use RAM and swap rather than disk.
MySQL 8.4 locks out accounts that use mysql_native_password by default; move them to caching_sha2_password. See install MySQL on Ubuntu 26.04 and 24.04.
OpenSSH 10.2 drops DSA keys (release notes). SSH still starts through socket activation, so a port change needs systemctl daemon-reload and systemctl restart ssh.socket (change the SSH port safely).
apt-key is removed (our upgraded system had apt 3.2.0 and no apt-key command): store repository keys in a file and use Signed-By, as in adding repositories on Ubuntu.
Chrony replaces systemd-timesyncd as the time daemon on new installs. To switch an upgraded server, the release notes give sudo apt-mark auto systemd-timesyncd and sudo apt install chrony.

Troubleshooting

“No new release found”: check Prompt=lts in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades (Prompt=never turns upgrades off) and that all updates for your current release are installed.
do-release-upgrade: command not found: install it with sudo apt install ubuntu-release-upgrader-core.
Errors about packages from a PPA or another third-party repository: remove that repository and its packages first (removing PPAs), then run the upgrader again. The logs in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ name the package that failed.

Upgrade or reinstall?

For a server that runs a few services, a fresh 26.04 install and a move of the data is often cleaner than an in-place upgrade, and you can test it before switching over: install Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS. On a KVM VPS you can rebuild from an OS template in the client area or mount your own ISO, which makes a test install easy. If you would rather hand the upgrade or the move over, our server management engineers handle migrations.

Official documentation: how to upgrade your Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release notes and summary for 24.04 users.