Canonical confirmed their Linux kernel plans today for the Ubuntu 26.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release due out in April.
This shouldn’t be too surprising since their announcement last year to always ship Ubuntu releases with the latest upstream kernel at the time and then proceeding in Ubuntu 25.10 to ship with the very fresh Linux 6.17 at the time. Now with their first Ubuntu LTS release ahead under this new kernel versioning strategy, they are going all in on what will be Linux 6.20 or more than likely re-badged as Linux 7.0.
It was announced today that Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” is planning to ship with Linux 6.20. No surprise really as the Linux 6.20 merge window will kick off in early February and the stable kernel should be out in April just ahead of the big Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release.
Linux 6.20 will likely end up being known as Linux 7.0. Typically Linus Torvalds bumps the major version number after x.19. So Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will likely end up with Linux 7.0 or 6.20 depending upon if Torvalds decides to adjust his versioning scheme or not. In any event, a nice fresh kernel for this next Ubuntu LTS version.
