Excellent news, Apple Watch house owners. When you’ve acquired a Collection 6 or later, it seems such as you’ll have the ability to set up and run watchOS 26.
On June 9, as a part of its WWDC keynote presentation, Apple will announce this 12 months’s huge software program replace for the Apple Watch, and the present concept is that this might be known as watchOS 26 (as within the 12 months 2026). This may include new options and certain a redesigned interface, and better of all, it gained’t price a penny to put in.
The true query, nevertheless, is whether or not you’ll have the ability to run it. Not each Apple Watch can run each model of watchOS, as a result of they develop into extra spec-intensive over time as Apple contains extra demanding options and extra advanced graphical components.
When you had a Collection 4 or later you may run watchOS 10 when it launched two years in the past, however the Collection 4 and Collection 5 had been each dropped from the listing of supported units when watchOS 11 got here out in 2024. Collection 6 house owners will due to this fact be scanning the tech information websites nervously to see in the event that they’ll have the ability to seize the replace this 12 months.
The excellent news is that Apple doesn’t appear to be planning to drop any extra units this 12 months. Based on a reputable new leak reported by MacRumors, the listing of supported Apple Watches for watchOS 26 would be the similar because it was for watchOS 11: the Collection 6 and later. The one change would be the addition of the late-2025 watches.
- Apple Watch Collection 6
- Apple Watch Collection 7
- Apple Watch Collection 8
- Apple Watch SE (2nd gen)
- Apple Watch Extremely (1st gen)
- Apple Watch Collection 9
- Apple Watch Extremely (2nd gen)
- Apple Watch Collection 10
- Apple Watch Collection 11 (anticipated)
- Apple Watch SE (third gen, doable)
- Apple Watch Extremely (third gen, doable)
To be frank, this might have been predicted earlier than the leak emerged. Apple has by no means reduce watches from its supported listing two years in a row: watchOS 5, 7, 9, and 11 all dropped fashions (generally a number of fashions without delay), however the ones in between saved issues regular. It might have been a serious shock if Apple had swung the hatchet for a second 12 months operating.
To be honest, that shocking flip of occasions might but occur. MacRumors’ supply is a personal account on X/Twitter, and whereas the location insists this supply has “a confirmed monitor document for upcoming software program updates,” it’s not possible to make certain they’re proper on this event. The one method to know the reality with any certainty might be to tune into the WWDC keynote on June 9. Macworld, evidently, might be overlaying all of the bulletins as they occur.
