How to Upgrade Ubuntu 24.04 to 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon)

So Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is finally here. Resolute Raccoon dropped on April 23, 2026, and honestly, this one is worth getting excited about — GNOME 50, Linux kernel 7.0, a Rust-powered sudo replacement, and native NVIDIA CUDA in the official repos. If you have been sitting on Ubuntu 24.04 and wondering whether now is a good time to upgrade, the short answer is: yes, go for it.

I have put together this guide to walk you through the whole process from start to finish. We’ll cover what’s actually new (so you know what you’re getting into), a pre-upgrade checklist to avoid common headaches, the upgrade itself using both the graphical tool and the terminal, and what to check once you reboot. There’s also a troubleshooting section at the end for the stuff that can go wrong.

Let’s get into it.

What’s Actually New in Ubuntu 26.04

Before you upgrade, it’s worth knowing what you’re walking into. This isn’t a minor point release — Ubuntu 26.04 brings some real changes that will affect your daily workflow, especially if you rely on NVIDIA hardware, X11 apps, or older PPAs.

⚠️ One thing that will catch people off guard: Google Drive integration has been removed from the Files app (Nautilus). The library it depended on went unmaintained and was dropped. If you use Google Drive through Files, sort out an alternative before you upgrade — a browser tab or rclone are your best options.

System Requirements

Make sure your machine is actually ready for 26.04 before you kick off the upgrade:

⚠️ If you are on Ubuntu 22.04 or an interim release like 25.04, you cannot jump straight to 26.04. You need to be on 24.04 LTS first.

Pre-Upgrade Checklist — Don’t Skip This

I know it’s tempting to just run the command and let it rip. Please don’t. Going through these six steps takes maybe 15 minutes and can save you from a broken system that takes hours to fix.

1. Back up your data

This is non-negotiable. The upgrade replaces thousands of packages and config files. Things can go wrong — a power cut at the wrong moment, a package conflict, a driver issue — and when they do, you need a way back.

Timeshift is the easiest option for a full system snapshot. For your home directory, rsync works great:

rsync -avz --progress /home/your-username/ /media/external-drive/backup/

💡 If you have a spare drive or a second partition, doing a full disk image with Clonezilla or dd gives you the ultimate safety net. Overkill for most, but worth it if you’re running anything mission-critical.

2. Fully update your 24.04 system first

The upgrade tool checks that your system is fully current before it proceeds. Save yourself the back-and-forth and just do it now:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo apt dist-upgrade -y

sudo apt autoremove -y

Reboot after this if any kernel or system updates were applied.

3. Write down your third-party PPAs

The upgrade process disables all your third-party PPAs automatically. They don’t get re-enabled afterwards — that’s on you. Jot them down now so you can sort them out after the upgrade:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list | grep -v '^#'

4. Check your NVIDIA drivers

If you’re on NVIDIA proprietary drivers, make sure you’re on the latest version before upgrading. Go to Software & Updates > Additional Drivers and apply any pending driver updates. GNOME 50 has improved NVIDIA suspend/wake support, but starting the upgrade on an outdated driver can cause problems.

5. Check you have enough free disk space

The upgrade needs room to download packages and stage the installation. 10–15 GB free on your root partition is the safe zone. Check it:

df -h /

If you’re tight on space, run apt autoremove and clean the package cache first:

sudo apt autoremove -y && sudo apt clean

6. Disable non-essential startup applications

VPN clients, custom daemons, and some startup scripts can interfere with the upgrade mid-process. Temporarily disable anything that isn’t standard via Settings > Startup Applications. You can re-enable them after the reboot.

The Upgrade — Two Ways to Do It

You can upgrade through the graphical Software Updater or from the terminal. Both methods get you to the same place. Pick whichever you’re more comfortable with.

Method 1: Software Updater (the easy way)

This is the way most desktop users will go, and it’s the most straightforward.

1. Open Software Updater from the Applications menu (or search for it in Activities).
2. Click Check for Updates. It will first install any remaining 24.04 updates.
3. Once that’s done, you’ll get a pop-up: ‘Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is now available.’ Click Upgrade.
4. The upgrade wizard launches. Read through the release notes if you like, then click Start Upgrade.
5. It will download the required packages — this can take a while depending on your connection. Go make a coffee.
6. When it asks about restarting services automatically, say Yes. Otherwise the upgrade will pause and wait for you to confirm each service restart manually, which is painful.
7. Near the end, it’ll ask whether to remove obsolete packages. Click Remove — these are leftover packages from 24.04 that aren’t needed anymore.
8. Finally, click Restart Now to reboot into Ubuntu 26.04.

💡 If Software Updater doesn’t offer the 26.04 upgrade, don’t panic. Canonical usually only enables the LTS-to-LTS upgrade prompt after the first point release (26.04.1, expected August 2026). Until then, use Method 2 below to trigger it manually.

Method 2: Terminal with do-release-upgrade

Terminal method is great if you prefer to see exactly what’s happening, or if you’re doing this over SSH on a remote machine.

⚠️  Important: Run the upgrade from a TTY, not a GNOME terminal

During the upgrade, GNOME and its terminal emulator (gnome-terminal, Tilix, etc.) get their packages replaced mid-process. When that happens, your terminal window will simply close — and if the upgrade process was tied to it, it dies too. The cleanest way to avoid this is to run the upgrade from a virtual console (TTY) outside of the graphical session entirely.

Switch to TTY3 with:

Ctrl + Alt + F3

Log in with your username and password, then run the upgrade from there. The TTY session is completely independent of the graphical environment — even if GNOME crashes or restarts during the upgrade, your terminal stays alive. When the upgrade finishes, switch back to your desktop with Ctrl + Alt + F2 (or F1), then reboot.

First, make sure update-manager-core is installed:

sudo apt install update-manager-core -y

Then kick off the upgrade:

sudo do-release-upgrade

The tool will walk you through everything in sequence — checking for the release, downloading packages, confirming the changes, and cleaning up. Here’s what it asks and what to do:

⚠️ If sudo do-release-upgrade comes back with ‘No new release found’, it just means the upgrade hasn’t been officially opened up yet for your channel. Force it with the -d flag: sudo do-release-upgrade -d

After the Reboot — Things to Check

You’re in Ubuntu 26.04 now. Before you get back to your normal workflow, run through these quick checks.

Confirm the OS version

lsb_release -a

You should see: Description: Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

Check the kernel version

uname -r

You should be on kernel 7.0.x.

Re-enable your PPAs

Remember those PPAs you noted earlier? Time to go through them. Open Software & Updates > Other Software, re-enable the ones that matter to you, then run an update:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

If a PPA doesn’t have a 26.04 build yet, disable it for now and check back in a few weeks. Trying to force it will cause package errors.

Sort out your NVIDIA setup

Go to Software & Updates > Additional Drivers and confirm your driver is active and loaded correctly. Good news: CUDA is now in the official Ubuntu repos, so if you were using a third-party CUDA PPA, you can likely drop it and just do:

sudo apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit

Verify your Wayland session

GNOME 50 is Wayland-only. If something feels off with a particular app, check that you’re actually on Wayland:

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

Troubleshooting

Upgrades don’t always go perfectly. Here are the most common issues and how to sort them out.

‘No new release found’

This just means the official upgrade path for your channel hasn’t opened yet. Use the -d flag to force it:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Upgrade hangs and stops responding

Sometimes a configuration dialog gets buried under terminal output and the upgrade looks frozen. Open a second terminal and check what’s waiting:

ps aux | grep apt

If you see a debconf process sitting idle, switch back to the first terminal and press Tab or Enter to interact with the hidden dialog.

Black screen or login loop after reboot

This usually points to a display manager or GPU driver conflict, most commonly on NVIDIA systems. At the GRUB menu, choose Advanced options > recovery mode, then Resume to get a minimal session. From there, reinstall the driver:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

sudo reboot

That fixes it in most cases. If not, try purging and reinstalling the specific driver version:

sudo apt purge nvidia-* && sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Apps broken or crashing — Wayland issues

Since GNOME 50 dropped X11, some apps that haven’t been updated for Wayland can behave oddly — screen sharing not working, window positioning issues, crashes on launch. The quick fix is running the app via XWayland:

GDK_BACKEND=x11 app-name

For Electron-based apps (VS Code, Slack, Discord), add –no-sandbox or –ozone-platform=x11 as a launch flag. Check the app’s release notes too — many have released Wayland-native versions recently.

Font or display looks wrong / fractional scaling issues

GNOME 50 improved fractional scaling but you may need to re-set it after the upgrade. Go to Settings > Displays, and set your preferred scale. If things still look off, try toggling the setting off and back on — sometimes it just needs a nudge.

FAQ

Final Thoughts

Honestly, Ubuntu 26.04 feels like one of the more satisfying LTS upgrades in a while. The move to GNOME 50 with proper Wayland-only sessions cleans up a lot of the fractional scaling and display weirdness that plagued earlier releases. The Rust-based core utilities and the new sudo-rs are quiet improvements that you won’t notice day-to-day but matter for long-term security. And having CUDA in the official repos is a genuine quality-of-life win for anyone doing any kind of AI or GPU work.

The upgrade process itself is pretty smooth — as long as you go in prepared. Do the backup, update your current system first, note your PPAs, and you’ll be fine. If something does go wrong, the troubleshooting section above covers the most common scenarios.

If this guide helped you out, drop a comment below — and if you hit an issue that isn’t covered here, let me know and I’ll add it to the troubleshooting section.

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Mohammad Dahamshi

I’m a software engineer with roots in embedded systems and a growing focus on DevOps and self-hosted infrastructure. CKA certified, CCNA background, and a homelab that never sleeps — running Proxmox, Kubernetes, Docker, Coolify, and more. On techlino.net I share practical guides on Linux, virtualization, and infrastructure built from real experience.