Home windows 11 26H2 arrives in October. This is why you should not skip it

The replace might come as early because the final week of September, as was the case with Home windows 11 25H2… however even then, it solely began rolling out on September thirtieth and didn’t hit most customers till October. In the meantime, Home windows 11 24H2 and 23H2 weren’t launched till October—so odds are good that we’ll see one other October launch for 26H2.

What to anticipate in Home windows 11 26H2

Home windows 11 26H2 gained’t introduce many new options, primarily as a result of Microsoft already rolled out quite a lot of new options over the previous couple of months (together with Level-in-Time Restore and Cloud Rebuild and a handful of others) as a substitute of holding them till 26H2.

One genuinely new function coming with 26H2 will probably be automated cloud backups of Home windows settings, the Microsoft Retailer replace record, and a few private recordsdata. It’ll be enabled by default, however may be disabled.

The true motive to get 26H2 is that it’ll lengthen the help interval of Home windows 11 by one other yr. If you happen to’re nonetheless on 24H2 House or Professional, you’ll cease receiving updates after October thirteenth, 2026. In the meantime, in the event you keep on 25H2 with out updating to 26H2, you’ll cease receiving updates after October twelfth, 2027. By upgrading to 26H2, you’ll preserve receiving safety and have updates till October 2028.

By the best way: If you happen to’re utilizing Home windows 11 House, you’re lacking out on the various advantages of Home windows 11 Professional. To be taught extra, see our comparability of Home windows 11 House and Professional. If you wish to improve, snag it for reasonable within the PCWorld Software program Retailer: now simply $59 as a substitute of $99.

Home windows 11 26H2’s obtain is small

Once more, the replace to 26H2 will probably be through an enablement package deal—one which’s anticipated to be simply 174 KB in dimension. The code for all of the modifications is already included in Home windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 through previous and current updates, however they’re laying dormant. The enablement package deal merely permits them.