• Microsoft has confirmed that 26H2 will be a minor update
• It'll be a "small enablement package" like Windows 11 25H2
• This means less likelihood of bugs, with major features being rolled out separately in monthly updates – a sensible approach, although that said, 27H2 could be different

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11's next annual update will be another minor affair, all in the cause of avoiding a repeat of the chaos around the 24H2 update.

Windows 11 24H2 was the last version of the OS to land bristling with major changes, as 25H2 was a small incremental update – and now it's confirmed that this will be the case for 26H2 as well.

Windows Latest reports that Microsoft confirmed that Windows 11 26H2 is a "small enablement package" just like 25H2 before it.

In reality, this means that the upgrade is essentially a lightweight download with no meaningful feature additions – so isn't that disappointing?

In a word, no, because it's just indicative of how Microsoft has switched to a more sensible way of working in terms of yearly updates for Windows 11.

Analysis: a more stable way of working

Instead of unloading a whole raft of new features in the annual update, Microsoft is now deploying those features in stages throughout the year. And that strategy of drip-feeding important new features in different monthly updates – with the usual controlled rollouts, the pace of which varies depending on how cautious Microsoft is feeling about any given piece of functionality – is a better way of working overall.

Not only does it mean that we don't have to wait until the latter half of every year to receive major new changes for Windows 11, but we don't have a massive download and complicated installation to deal with when the H2 update arrives, too. On top of that, there's more chance of things going awry when a big annual update lands, as we saw with the 24H2 update, which suffered a whole load of annoying bugs – and I think Microsoft learned its lesson from this.

So, what's the point of the annual update now? Well, 26H2 provides another marker for support, extending your ability to get updates. Those still on Windows 11 24H2 should note that support runs out for this version in October 2026 – which is when 26H2 should roll out (or just before, perhaps in September) – so those on 24H2 will need to upgrade to 26H2.

That said, the other possibility with installing a newer version of Windows 11 that's an enablement package is that while it doesn't pack any new features as such, stepping up to the latest release such as 26H2 may trigger a feature rollout for your PC that you wouldn't have got otherwise. There's no guarantee you'll get anything, mind, but it could work out that way.

All in all, I'd rather Microsoft worked this way for the noted reasons around the increased stability of piecemeal feature deployment, rather than them arriving in one big lump with the inherent danger of a bunch of gremlins therein.

Microsoft can follow this path because the foundations of the underlying codebase remain the same – which has been the case since 24H2 – although at some point, it'll need to take Windows 11 forward onto a new codebase, which is when we'll see a bigger update.

And we've already had signs that this will happen with next year's update, and that 27H2 could represent a big change for Windows 11, one that unifies the Arm and AMD/Intel (x86) architectures (with the former currently split off into its own branch of the OS, on the 26H1 update instead of 26H2).

Hopefully going forward, Microsoft will still stick broadly to the new philosophy it appears to have embraced, in terms of fewer big updates and multiple enablement packages in-between.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).