Thomas Ward, Lubuntu project leader and member of the Ubuntu technical council, has announced the establishment of a new distribution development team Ubuntu MATE. This team has taken over the maintenance of the project after the departure of its founder. While there will be no formal release of Ubuntu MATE 26.04, MATE desktop packages for Ubuntu 26.04 are still being shipped and supported. The new team of developers is currently focused on debugging and fixing bugs that have accumulated over the years of project stagnation. Additionally, they are working on updating MATE to the 1.28 branch from the outdated MATE 1.26 release established in 2021.
Users of previous Ubuntu MATE branches can transition to the Ubuntu 26.04 package base by installing updates. However, a separate installation image of Ubuntu MATE on the Ubuntu 26.04 base will not be released. For new systems, users can install any edition of Ubuntu 26.04 and then add the MATE desktop by using the command “sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop”. The autumn builds of Ubuntu MATE 26.10 are anticipated to be released as a full edition.