Grab the point-release ISO, not the one from April. Canonical rebuilt the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS desktop and server images at the end of August with four months of fixes folded in. Since 29 September it has also been offering the upgrade to 24.04 machines, so a lot of people are weighing an upgrade against a clean install. This guide is the clean install: you’ll verify the ISO, write it to a USB stick, and go through every screen to install Ubuntu 26.04 and reach a working GNOME desktop.
Each step covers what the installer leaves unsaid: what Extended selection adds over Default, what manual partitioning creates for you, and why hardware-backed encryption warns on a VM. Every step below was run in October 2026 on the Ubuntu 26.04.1 desktop ISO, on a UEFI virtual machine with Secure Boot and a virtual TPM.
Check the Ubuntu 26.04 system requirements
Ubuntu 26.04 Desktop needs a 2 GHz dual-core processor, 6 GB of RAM and 25 GB of free disk, according to the 26.04 release notes. The RAM floor went up from the 4 GB Canonical listed for 24.04, so an old 4 GB laptop that ran 24.04 fine is now below the line. Plan for these:
- 64-bit x86 (amd64) or ARM64 machine, UEFI recommended (hardware-backed encryption needs it)
- 2 GHz dual-core CPU or faster
- 6 GB RAM minimum
- 25 GB free disk (our Default install used 9.4 GB of its root file system)
- A USB stick of 8 GB or more, because the amd64 desktop ISO is 6.5 GB
If the machine has less memory than that, Canonical points you at Xubuntu or Lubuntu, which it supports on 2 GB and up. Our desktop environment RAM comparison has measured idle numbers for GNOME, Xfce, LXQt and the rest if you want to see where that 6 GB goes before you decide. A fresh GNOME session on our 8 GB VM settled at about 1 GB used once we were logged in with no apps open, so the 6 GB floor is about headroom for Firefox and your own apps, not the desktop itself.
Download the Ubuntu 26.04 ISO
The images moved to the point release in August, so the file names now carry 26.04.1 and the April 26.04 files sit alongside them only for reference. The amd64 images are on releases.ubuntu.com. The ARM64 ones are not, which is why so many people searching for the arm64 ISO end up on a 404: they live on cdimage.ubuntu.com instead.
| Image | File | Size (decimal GB) | Hosted on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop, amd64 | ubuntu-26.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso | 6.5 GB | releases.ubuntu.com/resolute |
| Server, amd64 | ubuntu-26.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso | 2.9 GB | releases.ubuntu.com/resolute |
| Desktop, ARM64 | ubuntu-26.04.1-desktop-arm64.iso | 4.2 GB | cdimage.ubuntu.com |
| Server, ARM64 | ubuntu-26.04.1-live-server-arm64.iso | 3.1 GB | cdimage.ubuntu.com |
| Server, ARM64 with 64k pages | ubuntu-26.04.1-live-server-arm64+largemem.iso | 3.1 GB | cdimage.ubuntu.com |
The ARM64 desktop image is the generic one Canonical describes as targeting VMs, ACPI and EFI platforms and Snapdragon-based Windows on ARM laptops. The installer screens are the same on both architectures, so everything after the download applies to either one.
Rather than hardcoding the point release, read the current one from the checksum file. This keeps working when 26.04.2 replaces it, which past releases suggest will be around February 2027. The commands use GNU grep, wget and sha256sum, so run them on Linux:
VER=$(curl -s https://releases.ubuntu.com/resolute/SHA256SUMS | grep -oP 'ubuntu-\K26\.04(\.[0-9]+)?(?=-desktop-amd64\.iso)' | sort -V | tail -1)
echo "$VER"It prints the point release that is live on the mirror:
26.04.1Download the desktop ISO and its checksum list into the same directory:
wget "https://releases.ubuntu.com/resolute/ubuntu-${VER}-desktop-amd64.iso"
wget https://releases.ubuntu.com/resolute/SHA256SUMSFor an ARM64 machine, swap in the cdimage path and the arm64 file name:
wget "https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/resolute/release/ubuntu-${VER}-desktop-arm64.iso"
wget -O SHA256SUMS https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/resolute/release/SHA256SUMSCheck the image before you write it anywhere. A download that stalled halfway still produces a file, and a truncated ISO usually boots far enough to waste twenty minutes before it fails:
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missingOnly the file you downloaded is checked, and it has to say OK:
ubuntu-26.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso: OKOn Windows, Get-FileHash .\ubuntu-26.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso in PowerShell gives the same SHA256 to compare against the line in SHA256SUMS.
Write the ISO to a USB drive
Any tool that writes the image byte for byte works: balenaEtcher on Windows, macOS or Linux, Rufus on Windows, and Startup Disk Creator or dd on Linux. Ventoy works too, with one exception: Ventoy 1.1.11 breaks the installer when it reaches the disk step, which Canonical lists as a known issue in its bootable USB guide. Ventoy 1.1.12 fixed it, so if you keep a Ventoy multiboot stick, update it before you blame the ISO.
On Linux, find the stick first. The size and the RM (removable) column are what tell it apart from your system disk:
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,RM,MODELThen write the image to that whole device, not to a partition on it. Replace /dev/sdX with the name you just found, because dd doesn’t ask before it overwrites a disk, and swap in the arm64 file name if that is the one you downloaded:
sudo dd if="ubuntu-${VER}-desktop-amd64.iso" of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=syncPlug the stick into the target machine and open its one-time boot menu, usually F12, F11, F9 or Esc right after power on. Pick the UEFI entry for the USB drive if the menu lists it twice.
Boot the installer
The ISO boots with Secure Boot left on, so most machines need no firmware changes. The exception is Secured-core PCs from Lenovo, HP and Microsoft, which can ship with “Allow Microsoft 3rd party UEFI CA” turned off; the USB stick will not boot until you enable that option in the firmware. GRUB shows four entries and starts the first one on its own after 30 seconds:
Pick Ubuntu (safe graphics) only if the normal entry gives you a black screen. It boots with nomodeset, which gets you to the installer on a GPU the live kernel can’t drive yet, and you install the proper driver afterwards. On our VM, the installer window was up within three minutes of pressing Enter at GRUB. Real hardware with an NVMe drive and a fast USB stick is usually quicker.
Pick the language, accessibility and keyboard
The language you pick here becomes the locale of the installed system, and it decides which language packs get copied in. English is preselected:
One catch from the release notes: the live session itself isn’t localized, so installing in a language other than English needs an internet connection for the installer to fetch the translations.
The accessibility screen comes next. Seeing, hearing, typing, pointing and zoom options take effect in the live session straight away, which matters if you need a screen reader or large text to get through the rest of the installer. The screen itself says everything here can be changed later in Settings, so skip it with Next if you don’t need it:
On the keyboard screen, type a few characters into the test field before you move on. A wrong layout here turns into a password you can’t type at the login screen, and the field is the cheapest way to catch it. Detect walks you through pressing keys if you’re not sure which layout your keyboard is:
If the text you typed matches the keys you pressed, the layout is right and you can click Next.
Connect to the network
A wired connection is picked up automatically. Stay online if you can, because the installer uses the connection for the media codecs, third-party drivers and the translations mentioned above. Choosing Do not connect to the internet still gives you a working system, just without those extras:
When the installer snap on the ISO is older than the one in the store, an extra screen offers to update the installer before you continue. It did not appear on our run with the 26.04.1 ISO. If you do see it, taking the update is the safer choice on an old ISO, since it brings installer bug fixes with it.
Choose Install Ubuntu and the interactive type
Install Ubuntu is preselected. Try Ubuntu closes the installer and leaves you in the live desktop, which is worth doing on a new laptop to check Wi-Fi, sound and suspend before you wipe anything:
Keep Interactive installation on the next screen. The two automated options read an autoinstall.yaml file, either one you supply or one served by Landscape, and they’re meant for rolling out many identical machines. For a single desktop, there is nothing to gain from them:
Interactive is preselected, so Next takes you on to the app selection.
Choose Default or Extended selection
Default selection gives you GNOME, Firefox and the core GNOME apps, and nothing for office work or mail. Extended selection adds LibreOffice, Thunderbird and a handful of media and utility apps. The installer gives each option one line, and the slideshow during the install advertises LibreOffice whichever one you pick, so we compared the two package manifests on the 26.04.1 ISO to see exactly what changes:
| Default selection | Extended selection | |
|---|---|---|
| Installed size (from the ISO’s install-sources) | 6.5 GB | 8.3 GB |
| Packages | 1,552 | 1,783 (231 more) |
| Browser, Files, Text Editor, terminal, image and PDF viewers | Yes | Yes |
| App Center, Firmware Updater, Security Center | Yes | Yes |
| LibreOffice Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math | No | Yes |
| Thunderbird | No | Yes |
| Rhythmbox, Shotwell, Showtime video player, Snapshot camera | No | Yes |
| Remmina, Transmission, Déjà Dup backups, Document Scanner, Calendar | No | Yes |
We’d take Default on almost every machine. The 1.8 GB difference is mostly LibreOffice and its language packs, and installing LibreOffice later takes one command or one click in App Center. Extended is the better pick when the machine will be offline after the install, which matches the installer’s own “offline-friendly” label. For the difference between the snap, Flatpak and apt routes you’ll use to add apps afterwards, see our Ubuntu 26.04 snap, Flatpak and apt guide.
Decide on drivers and codecs
Both boxes are off by default, because Ubuntu ships no proprietary software unless you ask. The first one installs third-party drivers for the hardware it detects, NVIDIA graphics being the common case, and some Wi-Fi chips. The second pulls the restricted codecs for MP3, MP4, MOV and similar formats. We ticked only the codecs box on the VM, since there was no hardware to drive:
On a laptop with an NVIDIA GPU, tick the first box. The installer pulls the pre-built, signed NVIDIA driver, which works with Secure Boot as it is, and NVIDIA is also the only out-of-tree driver that TPM-backed encryption supports. If you skip it now, our NVIDIA driver and CUDA guide covers adding it later.
Set up the disk
Erase disk and install Ubuntu wipes the whole drive and lets the installer lay it out. On a disk that already holds Windows or another Linux, a third option appears to install alongside it. With BitLocker on the Windows drive, the installer can only go alongside it if there is already enough unallocated space, so shrink the Windows volume in Disk Management first, or turn BitLocker off. Either way, save your BitLocker recovery key before you start: the installer itself warns that Windows may ask for it on the next boot, and without it you can lose the Windows data. An empty disk gets only the two options shown here, Erase disk and Manual installation:
We kept Erase disk and install Ubuntu for the run in this guide, after a detour through the partition editor below.
Ubuntu 26.04 manual partitioning
Manual installation opens the partition editor, and the Next button stays greyed out until a root (/) partition exists. Select the free space and press + to open the create dialog:
You don’t have to create the EFI partition yourself. When we added a single ext4 partition mounted at / on a blank disk, the editor carved out a 1.13 GB FAT32 partition for /boot/efi on its own and shrank root to fit. It made no swap partition either, because Ubuntu uses a swap file:
Add a separate /home partition the same way if you want to reinstall later without touching your files. Keep Device for boot loader installation pointed at the disk you boot from. On a machine with two drives, that dropdown is the setting that decides which disk the firmware has to boot.
Pick encryption and a file system
This screen decides whether a stolen laptop gives up its data, and it cannot be changed later without reinstalling. The three main options:
- No encryption: plain ext4, fine for a desktop that never leaves the house or a VM
- Encrypt with a passphrase: LVM on LUKS, a passphrase prompt at every boot
- Use hardware-backed encryption: the key sealed in the TPM, unlocked automatically at startup
For a laptop, we’d pick the passphrase option. Hardware-backed encryption is the convenient one, but it needs Secure Boot and a TPM 2.0 chip. Automatic unlock also needs Intel Boot Guard or AMD Platform Secure Boot, which Canonical says generally means PCs from 2021 on, and two of its limits bite later. A TPM-encrypted 26.04 install cannot upgrade to 26.10 at release, according to the 26.10 release notes (Canonical expects to enable it during the 26.10 cycle), and running update-grub after the usual GRUB customizations can leave it unable to boot, because snapd owns the boot configuration on these systems.
Advanced options hides three more layouts. Both ZFS options carry an Experimental badge on 26.04, so we’d leave them for test machines:
Plain LVM without encryption is the one worth knowing about here, because it lets you resize volumes later without repartitioning.
“There is an issue with hardware-backed encryption”
We picked hardware-backed encryption on purpose, to see how it behaves on a virtual TPM. The installer checks the platform before it continues and stops with this screen. Under Technical details, the reason reads RUNNING_IN_VM, “virtual machine environment detected”:
Ignore and continue carries on with the TPM install, and on our VM it finished and booted with the disk unlocked automatically, no PIN or passphrase asked. On real hardware the same check tests the firmware instead, and the troubleshooting section at the end lists what it has to find.
Create your account and set the timezone
Every field gets a green tick once it’s valid. The computer’s name becomes the hostname in /etc/hostname and on your network, and the username becomes your home directory and the first account in the sudo group:
Leave Require my password to log in ticked on anything portable, since turning it off logs the machine straight into your desktop at boot. Use Active Directory adds a screen to join an AD domain during the install, which only makes sense if your organization runs one.
The timezone comes from a geolocation lookup when you’re online, so it is usually right already. Click the map or type a city in Location to change it:
The time itself syncs over NTP after the first boot, so only the zone matters at this point.
Review the choices and install Ubuntu 26.04
Nothing has touched the disk yet. The review screen is the last point where Back undoes everything, so read the partition list, not only the summary at the top:
Hardware-backed encryption uses a different layout from a normal install, borrowed from Ubuntu Core. Scrolling down the list on our run showed five partitions instead of the usual two:
sda1: BIOS bootsda2ubuntu-seed: vfat, mounted at/boot/efisda3ubuntu-boot: ext4, mounted at/bootsda4ubuntu-save: ext4sda5Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS: ext4, mounted at/
Click Install. The slideshow runs while the installer copies the image, installs the boot loader and seeds the snaps, and the terminal icon at the bottom right shows the live log if you want to see what it’s doing:
Leave the machine alone while it runs, and keep a laptop plugged in to power.
How long does Ubuntu 26.04 take to install?
Our install took about 17 minutes from clicking Install to the end screen, on a 4 vCPU VM with SSD-backed storage, Default selection, codecs on and hardware-backed encryption. Copying the system took under four minutes. Most of the rest went to “Setting up the system”, where the slideshow stops moving for long stretches while snaps are seeded and the encryption keys are sealed. That stretch looks frozen and is not, so leave it alone. A spinning disk or a slow USB 2.0 stick can easily double the time.
A hardware-backed encryption install stops once more before the end to show a recovery key. You need that key if the TPM ever refuses to unseal the disk, and as the screen warns, without it you lose access to all your data. Save it to a password manager or another device, not to the disk you just encrypted, then tick the box to continue:
The last screen confirms the release that went onto the disk. Click Restart now:
The boot splash then asks you to remove the installation medium and press Enter. Pull the USB stick out at that point, or the firmware may boot the installer again.
Log in for the first time
With hardware-backed encryption, the first boot unlocks the disk from the TPM without asking for anything, and the login screen appeared about 50 seconds after we pressed Enter. A passphrase install stops at an unlock prompt first. Pick your account and type the password you set:
The first login opens a short setup that offers Ubuntu Pro, location services, the anonymous system and error reports, and light or dark style with an accent colour. Location services and both reports are switched off until you turn them on, and everything here can be changed in Settings later. Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use and extends security updates to a much wider set of packages until 2036, so it is worth enabling on a machine you plan to keep. On our install, Software Updater was already reporting 72 updates before the setup was finished:
Click Finish and you land on the GNOME desktop with the Resolute Raccoon wallpaper. The dock holds Firefox, Files, App Center, Help and the Trash, and Show Apps sits at the bottom:
GNOME on Ubuntu 26.04 runs only on Wayland. The GNOME Xorg session is gone, so there is no “Ubuntu on Xorg” option at the login screen any more, and X11 apps run through XWayland instead.
Verify the installed release
Settings, then System and About, shows the release, memory and disk size:
The terminal gives you more detail. Open one with Ctrl+Alt+T and confirm what you installed. /etc/os-release carries the point release, which lsb_release doesn’t always show:
grep -E '^(PRETTY_NAME|VERSION_CODENAME)=' /etc/os-releaseBoth lines should match what the end screen of the installer reported:
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS"
VERSION_CODENAME=resoluteCheck the kernel and the session type next:
uname -r
echo "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE"The kernel is the 7.0 series and the session type has to read wayland:
7.0.0-28-generic
waylandOn a hardware-backed encryption install, lsblk also shows the Ubuntu Core style layout from the review screen: the 4.9 GB ubuntu-seed and 750 MB ubuntu-boot partitions in the clear, and ubuntu-save and the root file system as LUKS volumes the TPM unlocks at boot. Swap is a file, /swap.img, sized from your RAM (4 GB on our 8 GB VM). These commands show the same details on your own machine:
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE -e7
swapon --show
mokutil --sb-stateOn our TPM install, the output looked like this:
The same layout changes how the kernel is updated, which caught us out. A TPM install has no linux-image package at all, because the kernel comes from the pc-kernel snap. After apt full-upgrade on our VM, the kernel was still 7.0.0-28 while the snap store already had 7.0.0-38. A passphrase or unencrypted install uses the normal kernel packages, which apt updates.
Then bring the system up to date. The ISO is frozen at the end of August, so a fresh install already has updates waiting:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -yThat took 58 seconds for the 72 updates our fresh install was waiting on, and it asked for a reboot afterwards. On a hardware-backed encryption install, also refresh the snaps before that reboot, since that is where the kernel updates come from:
sudo snap refreshThen reboot, whichever layout you installed, so the new kernel and libraries are in use:
sudo systemctl rebootAfter the reboot our VM was on 7.0.0-38, and the TPM unsealed the disk with the new kernel without a prompt. If you plan to run services on this box, the Ubuntu 26.04 initial setup guide covers SSH, the firewall and users, and Docker CE on Ubuntu 26.04 is the usual next install on a developer machine.
Fix Ubuntu 26.04 when it won’t install
Most failed installs we see come down to firmware settings or the USB stick, not the ISO. Work through these in order.
Black screen after choosing Try or Install Ubuntu
The live kernel couldn’t drive the GPU. Reboot and pick Ubuntu (safe graphics) at the GRUB menu, finish the install, and tick the third-party drivers box on the way through so the installed system gets the NVIDIA driver. In a VM, give the guest a display adapter GNOME supports: on Proxmox we used QXL, and on VirtualBox or VMware turn 3D acceleration off, because the release notes say GTK 4 apps draw incorrectly with it on.
The USB stick boots on one machine and not another
Check the checksum first, then the tool you wrote it with. A Ventoy 1.1.11 stick is the known culprit on 26.04: the installer starts but fails at the disk step. Update Ventoy to 1.1.12 or newer, or flash the plain ISO with balenaEtcher or dd. On older firmware, make sure you picked the UEFI entry for the stick and not a legacy one.
Hardware-backed encryption won’t go past the check
The check runs before anything is written, so it costs you nothing to fix the firmware and boot the installer again. Canonical’s hardware-backed encryption requirements list what the machine needs:
- UEFI 2.5 or newer firmware
- A TPM 2.0 chip, enabled in the firmware
- Secure Boot enabled and in Deployed Mode
NVMe RAID is a separate trap the check does not catch. The 26.04 release notes say the kernel snap used for hardware-backed encryption lacks the vmd module, so a drive behind Intel VMD or “RAID On” is not available after the install. The fix is switching the storage mode to AHCI in the firmware, but on a machine that also runs Windows, reconfigure Windows for AHCI first with Canonical’s AHCI how-to, or Windows will stop booting with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.
The release notes also warn that some eligible machines are wrongly reported as ineligible. If the firmware looks right and the check still fails, use the passphrase option, which gives you the same protection with a prompt at boot.
“Install alongside Windows” is missing
The option only appears when the installer can read the Windows partition and find space. BitLocker is the usual reason it cannot. Save the BitLocker recovery key first, then in Windows either shrink the volume in Disk Management to leave unallocated space or turn BitLocker off (suspending it is not enough, because the volume stays encrypted). Disable Fast Startup too, so Windows releases the drive, then boot the installer again.
Upgrade from 24.04 instead of reinstalling
A clean install is the right call for a new machine, a disk layout you want to change, or switching to encryption. If you’re already on 24.04 and just want the new release, you do not need the ISO at all. Since 29 September, Canonical has offered 24.04 machines the upgrade to 26.04.1 through Software Updater, rolled out in stages, and sudo do-release-upgrade starts it on demand without the -d flag. Our Ubuntu 24.04 to 26.04 upgrade guide walks through it, including the third-party repositories the upgrader disables. If you want the newest interim release instead of the LTS, our Ubuntu 26.10 install guide covers the same installer with nine months of support instead of five years.
