At WWDC 2025, Apple stated that public betas for its platforms of version 26 (iOS 26, iPadOS 26, etc.) would be available sometime this month. Last year on July 15, Apple launched public betas for iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 to testers. I honestly was hoping for Apple to launch public betas for iOS 26 this week since that’s around the time that Apple usually starts public betas for its upcoming updates. But according to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, it looks like we will have to wait a bit longer as he expects the public betas for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and so on to be available around Wednesday, July 23, so this means sometime next week, Apple will issue the first public betas for the following releases:
- iOS 26
- watchOS 26
- tvOS 26
- macOS 26
- iPadOS 26
- HomePod Software 26
- AirPods Firmware
Keep in mind that omitted on the list of planned public betas is visionOS 26, according to Apple’s website.
Users who have an Apple Developer account can still have access to the developer betas, even after Apple lifted the $99/year fee for the Apple Developer Program membership. But non-developers are strongly urged to not download the very first developer betas since they can be very buggy. Still, users planning to download the public betas are still cautioned to install them on their secondary devices after backing them up.
So we won’t have to wait too long to see Apple launching the first public betas of many of its platforms of version 26.
