As if keeping track of whatever counts as a release schedule for Windows wasn’t complicated enough – don’t lie, you don’t know when that feature they announced is actually being released either – Microsoft is making everything even more complicated. Soon, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 11 26H1, but you most likely won’t be getting it because it’s strictly limited to devices with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Series processors.
The only way to get this version of Windows is to go out and buy a device with a Snapdragon X2 Series processor. Windows 11 26H1 will not be made available to any other Windows 11 users, so nobody will be able to upgrade to it. Furthermore, users of Windows 11 26H1 will not be able to update to the “feature update” for users of Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, the regular Windows versions, planned for late 2026. Instead, Microsoft promises there will be an upgrade path for 26H1 users in a “future” release of Windows. Why?
Devices running Windows 11, version 26H1 will not be able to update to the next annual feature update in the second half of 2026. This is because Windows 11, version 26H1 is based on a different Windows core than Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2, and the upcoming feature update. These devices will have a path to update in a future Windows release.
↫ AriaUpdated at the Windows IT Pro Blog
The same thing happened when Qualcomm releases its first round of Snapdragon processors for Windows, as Windows 24H2 was also tied to this specific platform. It seems Microsoft is forced to have entirely separate and partially incompatible codebases just to support Snapdragon processors, which must be a major pain in the ass to deal with. Considering Windows on ARM hasn’t exactly been a smashing success, one may wonder how long Microsoft remains willing to make such exceptions for a singular chip.
> It seems Microsoft is forced to have entirely separate and partially incompatible codebases
I do not think that is true. For one thing, they unify again in the H2 release.
My guess is that this is more about trying to isolate the testing and support of this new architecture to be independent of a release of new features. It is probably almost entirely non-technical. In fact, they say “version 26H1 is not a feature update for version 25H2”.
The schedule for Windows has been to release an “H2″ release once per year in October and to not have an H1 release. They released 25H2 last October as expected. Mostly likely, they then took that release and prepared it for the Snapdragon X2. This would no doubt have taken some new dev work and, more importantly, testing and iteration. Instead of releasing a new unified version to everybody, they are releasing it only with Snapdragon hardware. That means they can address any problems encountered by pushing fixes just to Snapdragon users without worrying about the wider ecosystem. And, since they no doubt introduced some new bugs somewhere, they active do not want other customers upgrading to this release until those bugs are fixed, especially if there are no new features anyway.
But I doubt it is really any different from a codebase perspective. If you had Windows 11 26H1, you could probably install it on your Intel processor. And, when Windows 26H2 releases this October, the same release will go out as an upgrade to users of both 26H1 (Snapdragon) and 25H2 (everybody else). When 27H2 rolls around, it will again roll out to everybody at the same time.
Windows NT was muliti-architecture from its earliest days. My first experiences with Windows NT were on DEC Alpha hardware. It also ran on MIPS and PowerPC. So, ARM64 is actually the 4th RISC ISA that Windows has run on.
Like always, the big failure here is naming and messaging.
Yes, this is coming out in February of 2026. So, to Microsoft, it makes perfect sense to call it WIndows 11 26H1. But they should probably have called it Windows 11 25H2 instead. It would have a higher build number than the 25H2 that everybody else is using but otherwise behave the same. And then nobody would be upset that they were not getting 26H1. And there would be no articles about how they have to create an ‘”entirely separate and partially incompatible codebase”.
Perhaps this is being forced on them because Windows Update is too stupid to do the right thing unless they give it a unique name and not just a bigger build number. That would not surprise me at all.
Apologies. I wish I could edit my post. I missed that 26H1 will not update to 26H2. That said, we are probably still talking about two branches in Git that they do not want to merge yet rather than “entirely separate” but who knows.
I am not sure when Microsoft freezes development of the code for the 26H2 release but I expect the first branch from 25H2 was made mid-last year while 25H2 was frozen for testing. Perhaps they are just too far along with 26H2 now to merge back with 26H1 without disruption. Or did Microsoft truly do some deep plumbing in 26H1. For what? Power management?
Windows on ARM has not taken over the world but it cannot have been too big a failure or there would not be so many OEMs releasing X2 laptops this round. I am still hoping for a RISC-V world but the X2 laptops actually look really nice and, given it is only their second generation, I think they have done an impressive job of catching up with Apple Silicon. This is just my view of course.
This is not a pitch to buy Snapdragon chips. I hope that nobody buys them so that RISC-V gets the 2-3 years it needs to be similarly competitive on laptops. But Microsoft knows the world is changing and I doubt they love that they currently have all their eggs in the x86-64 basket. AWS is not looking to Intel for Graviton. Nobody is looking to Intel for AI. For Microsoft, Intel is the wrong star to be hitched to.
With regards to “one may wonder how long Microsoft remains willing to make such exceptions for a singular chip”, I imagine that Microsoft is more worried about Apple Silicon than the Snapdragon X2 specifically. And they cannot have completely missed that RISC-V players like Tenstorrent describe themselves as the future of AI. Gone are the days when Microsoft looks to their alliance with Intel to protect them from industry forces.
Microsoft needs Windows to work on ARM, not just for the desktop but for the server and for the cloud as well. And I am sure they have dreams of creating their own silicon.
As for Snapdragon laptop sales, it was Microsoft that botched the launch of the X1 with their Recall blunders. Thinking of that, it may have been Qualcomm that demanded Microsoft create a Windows release just for X2 with no new features. But even still, Qualcomm seems pretty happy with their progress:
“While we’re still in the early phase of the transition to Copilot+ PCs, we are pleased with consumer reception for Snapdragon X Series, which has exceeded our expectations. According to Circana, in December, Snapdragon X Series had more than 10% share of the greater-than-$800 Windows laptops in U.S. retail.”
— Cristiano R. Amon, Qualcomm President and CEO
Qualcomm could use a new market. Mobile phone sales are flattening.
https://hothardware.com/news/qualcomm-10pct-windows-laptop-share
We got for my girlfriend’s mother an ARM Samsung Windows laptop. For her use case, it is truly wonderful. Super thin, super small, built-in LTE, wakes from sleep instantly, battery goes for 20+ hours. She is a teacher and does web browsing + MS Office. Nothing is truly great about the laptop. The screen is low res, the keyboard is a bit meh, not a lot of ports, but overall it just works, like a Microsoft version of the Apple experience.
What you are describing sounds like a step below the Surface line of laptops and tablets from Microsoft. I consider the Surface line to be Microsoft’s answer to Apple portables, and for the most part they are almost as nice. I haven’t used the Samsung ARM laptop but from your description it seems like it wouldn’t live up to the Surface standard, let alone Apple’s Mac laptops and iPads.
I also haven’t tried any Surface devices with ARM CPUs, at least not modern ones. I had the Surface RT back in the day and I really enjoyed it for what it was. Microsoft’s hardware is generally very nice, it’s the OS that gets in the way of getting real work done on them. Despite having nearly the same hardware/software control Apple has with their devices, they can’t quite achieve that seamless feeling one gets when using a Mac. With that said, I don’t care for the direction macOS has taken recently so I sold off all of my Macs and haven’t used one in a couple of years now, maybe that seamlessness is not as good as it once was.
I really would like to find a modern equivalent to my current laptop, it’s an HP laptop/tablet hybrid from the end of the Windows 8 era, and it’s really finicky about OSes that will run on it. I’m currently dual booting FydeOS and Void Linux, but with Void it doesn’t have great hardware support; meanwhile FydeOS feels like it was made specifically for that obscure machine, a testament to the work the FydeOS developers put into it (granted, work done on the shoulders of Google’s ChromiumOS team).
Check out the Framework 12 convertible. Modern screen and plays well with Linux.
Thank you for the recommendation but I’m not buying anything from Framework.
I have considered the MNT Pocket Reform; I don’t necessarily have to have a convertible or tablet-based laptop, it’s just convenient when reading ebooks. The Pocket Reform checks almost all of my boxes, especially being fully open hardware and easily upgraded, I just can’t afford to get a new one without selling off a bunch of other stuff. Thanks to the RAM and storage crisis I can get more for my used limited edition Steam Deck than I paid for it new, but I’m not ready to let it go yet. I’d probably sell my desktop gaming PC before I sold that. That’s why I typically use an older but still performant laptop like the HP Elite, it fell into my lap (ha) when a friend no longer wanted it and I figured why not use it since it’s there?
I don’t get it.
Windows should be portable. Wasn’t it about the HAL + device drivers? The whole codebase should be multi platform already.
I don’t understand it anymore.
Qualcomm are assholes about making their SoCs work with upstream kernels. The Android and desktop Linux communities have been fighting them on this for decades. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn.
@runciblebatleth
Qualcomm are hard to work with. That is for sure. That said, they have done a decent job already of getting support into the LInux mainline. For the X2 Elite, the GPU driver is already in kernel 6.19 and they even released firmware a few days ago (so you do not have to extract it under Windows or anything).
That does not mean that a third-party laptop using X2 has drivers for all its hardware though. People blamed Qualcomm for some of the X1 Elite laptops but things like USB drivers and fingerprint readers have nothing to do with Qualcomm. The Lenovo X1 Elite laptops were the best supported. I imagine Lenovo would be a safe bet for the X2 Elite as well.
– Windows is portable.
– This point release/support pack is specific for ARM.
Both can be true at the same time.
The source blog post seems to have a few inaccuracies.
As of the 11th of February, Windows 11 26H1 versions have been available from Visual Studio subscriber downloads, for both consumer and business editions. All editions are available for both X64 and Arm64 – so 26H1 is definitely not Arm64-exclusive. I tested the X64 edition in a VM and it reports itself as Windows 26H1 OS build 28000.1575.
> Windows 11, version 26H1 will only be available on new devices with select new silicon as they come to market in early 2026.
Incorrect, it is available right now, and there are consumer and business editions for both X64 and Arm64.
> Windows 11, version 26H1 is not offered as an in-place update from Windows 11, version 24H2 or 25H2 on existing devices.
Perhaps it won’t be offered automatically via Windows Update, but I was able to update a VM from 25H2 to 26H1 with no issues.