It is official: Home windows 11 26H1 is not for you

On Friday, Microsoft launched the primary construct of Home windows 11 26H1—and as suspected, you received’t want to fret about it.

Microsoft launched Home windows 11 Insider Preview Construct 28000 to the Canary Channel, essentially the most experimental of the 4 Home windows Insider channels. “With this construct at the moment, Home windows Insiders within the Canary Channel will see the versioning up to date beneath Settings > System > About (and winver) to Home windows 11, model 26H1,” the corporate mentioned in a weblog submit.

Within the announcement, Microsoft was pretty clear that Home windows 11 26H1 received’t be one thing that buyers must fear about.

“26H1 is not a characteristic replace for model 25H2 and solely consists of platform modifications to help particular silicon,” the weblog submit famous. “There isn’t any motion required from clients.”

“[Windows 11] 25H2 stays the first place for brand new options,” the submit added. “Home windows 11 continues to have an annual characteristic replace cadence, with releases within the second half of the calendar yr.”

Microsoft’s assertion is in keeping with what tipster Phantomofearth revealed little greater than per week in the past: that the Home windows 11 26H1 launch was particularly aimed toward new silicon. The leaker claimed that the brand new silicon in query was the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite, which ought to ship in early 2026. Microsoft mainly used the sooner Snapdragon X Elite as a check mattress, rolling out new options on that platform first, then including help for different Copilot+ processors like Intel’s Core Extremely 200 chips and the AMD Ryzen AI 300 processors.

Though Microsoft may modify course and launch a brand new characteristic or two on the Home windows 11 26H1 channel, it appears to be like like fans who need to check out and check new Home windows options ought to stay on Home windows 11 25H2 for now. You possibly can double-check which model your PC is on by utilizing the “winget” command inside Home windows.

Once more, the Canary Channel is solely experimental. “The builds we launch to the Canary Channel characterize the most recent platform modifications early within the improvement cycle and shouldn’t be seen as matched to any particular launch of Home windows,” Microsoft famous. “Options and experiences included in these builds might by no means get launched as we check out totally different ideas and get suggestions. Options might change over time, be eliminated, or changed and by no means get launched past Home windows Insiders. A few of these options and experiences may present up in future Home windows releases after they’re prepared.”