We have news for anyone shipping Zephyr devices into the field. Canonical, our parent company, just announced Zephyr 26.04 Long Term Support (LTS), an enterprise distribution of Zephyr with up to 15 years of security maintenance. And yes, Golioth is part of it.
“But wait,” you say, “doesn’t Zephyr already have LTS releases?” It does, and we’re big fans. Upstream Zephyr provides 5 years of standard support. Zephyr 26.04 LTS builds on that foundation and stretches it to up to 15 years, delivered through an Ubuntu Pro for Devices subscription. It’s aimed at silicon vendors and the OEMs and ODMs building MCU-grade products that need to stay maintained long after launch day.
Why does 15 years matter?
Hardware outlives software support all the time. You ship a device, and a few years later a vulnerability shows up in a component you never touched. Now you need to patch firmware in the field, and you need to be able to prove you did it.
Regulation is catching up to that reality. The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is in force, and it requires manufacturers to provide at least 5 years of security maintenance, patching and record keeping. Many products are meant to last longer than that, and a longer support window gives you room to breathe.
Zephyr 26.04 LTS also brings a predictable rhythm. It follows the same release cadence as Ubuntu and the rest of Canonical’s portfolio, with an LTS every two years and interim releases every six months. The commitment covers more than the RTOS itself. It extends to essential ecosystem tooling like West, which most of us use daily to manage repos, build and flash firmware.
For teams that also run Linux-class devices, this means you can source long-term support for both Linux and microcontroller-class hardware from a single vendor.
Where does Golioth fit in?
Long-term support is only useful if the patches can actually reach your devices. A fix that can’t get to a device in the field is just a commit sitting in a repo.
That’s where we come in. Zephyr 26.04 LTS natively supports Golioth Cloud’s software update capabilities, so the Golioth SDK is included out of the box. That gives you:
- Over-the-air (OTA) updates to push new firmware to devices in the field
- Unique credential provisioning for each device
- Remote device management across your fleet
You get a complete delivery pipeline, from a long-lived Zephyr baseline to the device in the field, without building custom tooling to connect the two. For CRA field-update requirements, that’s a big piece of the puzzle handled for you.
What about the developer experience?
Canonical is also adding Zephyr LTS support to Canonical Workshop, which gives you repeatable, containerized, sandboxed development environments in a single command. With the Workshop SDK for Zephyr 26.04 LTS, you get a ready-to-use Zephyr LTS environment on any hardware, complete with the build tools you need. Skip the toolchain wrangling and run west build right away. That’s handy for onboarding new teammates, and it keeps everyone building against the same environment.
What if I’m already using Golioth with upstream Zephyr?
Nothing changes for you. Zephyr 26.04 LTS is an additional option for teams that need longer support windows, not a replacement for how you build with Zephyr and Golioth today. Our commitment to upstream Zephyr and its community stays right where it is.
Come say hi at Embedded World North America
Canonical will be at Embedded World North America in Anaheim, September 22-24. On Thursday, September 24 at 10:50 AM, we will present “Surviving the CRA: Architecting Zephyr for 15-Year Lifecycles and Long-Term Compliance” in the Zephyr: Zephyr Testing and Compliance track. If you’re thinking about how to build for a decade and a half of maintenance, it’s worth a seat.
Ready to dig in?
Learn more about Zephyr 26.04 LTS on the Canonical product page, or try the Workshop environment. Questions or feedback? Come find us on the Golioth Forum. We’d love to hear how you plan to use it.
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