Lo and behold, Ubuntu MATE 26.10 'Stonking Stingray' is here. We are back after a hiatus where the project skipped the 26.04 LTS release earlier this year. This is the first official release from the new circle of friends. And we intend to continue the 'tenacious' efforts into the future. What changed in Ubuntu MATE 26.10? The team. Joking apart, in terms of new features, we must admit we could not complete upgrade of all of MATE packages to their latest released version even with our best efforts. The urgency with which we gathered and worked, the high standard of Debian packaging, overall quality process involved in a release and not to forget the challenges of balancing personal life, all weighed in. On a positive note though, the available packages are stable. Many bugs were fixed by upstream. Some of those fixes have made it to the release and we are planning to backport others after the release. As Ubuntu MATE builds on top of Ubuntu, please see the Ubuntu 26.10 Release Notes for details of all the changes and improvements.