[Preview] QIIME 2 2026.1 development changelog

:exclamation: Important :exclamation:

The following is an early developer preview of the changes expected in 2026.1

This post is a live-document which will be updated throughout our development cycle. Any links will in this topic will be broken until the release is officially published. When we are ready for release, we’ll copy this changelog and create a new post in the Announcements category.


Developer Project Board:

QIIME 2 2026.1 Project on Github


:police_car_light: Important Announcements :police_car_light:


Interface Changes coming in QIIME 2 2026.4 :boom:

:bangbang: Breaking Changes :bangbang:


Developer Announcements :brick:


:sparkles: Here are the Highlights of the Release! :sparkles:


QIIME 2 View Updates :mag:


Distribution Updates :package:


Framework (i.e., rachis) Updates :grapes:


Interface Updates :tv:


Plugin Updates :electric_plug:

  • q2-types:
    • @cherman2 and @gregcaporaso fixed a bug that caused paired-end read data and demux artifacts to fail record count validation (i.e. forward and reverse files for the same sample should have the same number of records) if the data contained "overlapping ids". (example: Validation would fail because sample 5 and sample 51 have a different number of records).
  • q2-boots:
    • @Oddant removed the memory bottleneck in the medoid calculation used in averaging distance matrices such that memory scales linearly now (where previously it scaled quadratically). This allows for larger values of n than had previously been possible, and as a result medoid is now the default averaging method for distance matrices.

Community Plugin Updates :electric_plug:


Docker Container Updates :jar:

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