On Friday, Microsoft released the first build of Windows 11 26H1—and as suspected, you won’t need to worry about it.
Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000 to the Canary Channel, the most experimental of the four Windows Insider channels. “With this build today, Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel will see the versioning updated under Settings > System > About (and winver) to Windows 11, version 26H1,” the company said in a blog post.
In the announcement, Microsoft was fairly clear that Windows 11 26H1 won’t be something that consumers will have to worry about.
“26H1 is not a feature update for version 25H2 and only includes platform changes to support specific silicon,” the blog post noted. “There is no action required from customers.”
“[Windows 11] 25H2 remains the primary place for new features,” the post added. “Windows 11 continues to have an annual feature update cadence, with releases in the second half of the calendar year.”
Microsoft’s statement is in line with what tipster Phantomofearth revealed little more than a week ago: that the Windows 11 26H1 release was specifically aimed at new silicon. The leaker claimed that the new silicon in question was the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite, which should ship in early 2026. Microsoft basically used the earlier Snapdragon X Elite as a test bed, rolling out new features on that platform first, then adding support for other Copilot+ processors like Intel’s Core Ultra 200 chips and the AMD Ryzen AI 300 processors.
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