Microsoft has announced a new pre-production version of Windows with the designation Windows 11 26H1. It’s Preview Build 28000 for the Windows Insiders testing community. That is, in the Canary version, i.e. the one that offers the first version of Windows for testing outside of Microsoft itself, which has a number of undetected errors that will be discovered thanks to its release among the limited public testing community.
This means that both the features and the environment contained in these versions may never be released, as they serve as a test of various concepts and for gathering feedback. Features may change, be removed, or replaced over time and may never be released outside of the Windows Insiders program.
“The builds we release in the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be considered system-specific to any particular version of Windows,” Microsoft explains.
Existing users should not expect any significant changes to the user interface or functionality from version 26H1, as this version is primarily aimed at supporting yet-to-be-announced processors built on the ARM platform.
That is, on the one used by Qualcomm in the design of its Snapdragon X chips, which runs Windows for ARM. There are speculations that the 26H1 could be tailored to the yet-to-be announced Snapdragon X2 Elite and Nvidia N1X chips. This would mean the arrival of another processor manufacturer in the Windows ecosystem, even if only in the limited version that Windows for ARM is for now.
Basically, Microsoft wants to further expand its Windows platform for systems running on ARM, which should offer a better ratio of performance and energy consumption, but worse compatibility with older systems. It thus stands directly against platforms such as Google’s ChromeOS or Apple’s MacOS, which also rely on the ARM platform.
“This update contains several general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders using this build on their PCs. 26H1 is not a feature update for version 25H2 and only contains platform changes to support specific chips. Customers do not need to take any action,” Microsoft writes.
The company thus explains the somewhat surprising designation H1. The classic marking with the H2 ending, which the company uses to introduce new functions, still remains. These updates are officially released every fall of that year.
Microsoft does not explicitly state that the news should allow new processors to access Windows, but many infer it from the part of the sentence “only contains changes to the platform to support specific chips” in combination with the fact that it is the first time in the history of Windows 11 that the H1 version appears. It should be officially launched in the spring. New chips are also expected to appear in the first half of next year.
It’s kind of reminiscent of 2024, when Microsoft released the 24H2 version early to build in support for the first Snapdragon X-series chips.
Version 26H1 is also coming early to provide a stable foundation for new Windows devices equipped with new ARM chips.
