- Windows 11’s 25H2 update is now in the Release Preview channel
- This is the final stage of testing, meaning its arrival is imminent
- It won’t offer much in the way of exciting new features – which feels like a missed opportunity in terms of persuading people to upgrade from Windows 10
Windows 11 version 25H2 is now in its final stage of testing before the annual update for this year is rolled out, which should mean the upgrade is close at hand.
However, if you’re getting excited about what that might mean for Windows 11, I’d temper those expectations, as this update isn’t going to pack much in the way of new features.
Microsoft just announced the arrival of build 26200.5074, which is the 25H2 update, in the Release Preview channel – which, as the name indicates, is the last channel for preview builds before they’re released.
However, no new features are mentioned in the blog post. In fact, all Microsoft talks about is a few things which are being stripped out, namely PowerShell 2.0 and some other bits and pieces that will only be of concern to Windows 11 power users, and enterprises, and not to the average consumer.
Does that mean nothing is being introduced with Windows 11 25H2? No, in a word, as Microsoft will have some new features, and these are going to be piped through to Windows 11 PCs before the release of 25H2.
As we already know, the 25H2 update is being delivered as an enablement package, which means that the works for the new features are put in place in the background of Windows 11 – and all the update does when it’s released is flick the switch, as it were, to send those abilities live.
Analysis: an oddly timed fizzle of an update?
So, while we don’t know what the new features will be exactly, what we do know is that the update won’t be a big one. Enablement packages are used as a way of facilitating minor updates, so 25H2 won’t have any big moves – but it will carry a bunch of tweaks and some additions (you couldn’t have an annual update that did nothing but bug fixes, of course).
There likely won’t be anything worth shouting about, though, and it’s a fair bet that the weightier features – such as they are – will be AI-related and for Copilot+ PCs only, meaning most people won’t get them.
In some respects, it feels like an odd time to come out with a relative whimper of an update, considering that Microsoft is currently on something of a crusade to get Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11.
From that perspective, it would have been smart to unleash an update with something that really grabbed the attention of the people facing Windows 10’s end of support deadline and wondering what to do. A kind of: “Hey, get Windows 11 and you’ll benefit from this really cool feature” to help persuade some of the fence-sitters out there to take the plunge.
This feels like a missed opportunity to me; but of course, Microsoft has a software development schedule which must be adhered to, and I guess this is just how the dice happened to fall.
Given the free (with a slight catch) extra year of support for Windows 10 offer, I guess it’s also possible that Microsoft could be planning to make 26H2 something much beefier – as that freebie support extension will take folks through to next year. Maybe that could even be the launch of Windows 12, or whatever it might be called (although somehow, I doubt that).
Still, on the flipside, the good point about a minor update is that unlike Windows 11 24H2 – which did some major work under the surface of the operating system, and was a buggy release indeed – an update like 25H2 shouldn’t cause too much trouble in the way of glitches.
Whatever the case, the near-term news is that Windows 11 25H2 is almost here, and we might even see it released in October. In fact, I think that’s quite likely, although of course it will depend on how testing goes.