Apple Says Forget iOS 19. It’s Skipping Right From 18 to 26.

It was rumored to be on the slate for the fall of 2025, that time of year when Apple unveils its crop of new iPhones (among other things), and new operating systems that go with them. Now it’s official.

Apple has confirmed the rumors as of June 9 that after iOS 18, the next iPhone operating system will be known as iOS 26, to peg it to 2026. Not only that, but all of Apple’s other operating systems will also be brought in line with a naming convention matching the year of release. Sort of.

a new era in naming

The problem was that as Apple kept adding new device lineups, with their own operating systems, the nomenclature was getting confusing. Concurrently as of right now, the latest Apple operating systems (base OSes; I’m not getting into decimals) are iOS 18, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and visionOS 2.

So it’s not so easy to tell which are new. For 99 percent of the population, it’s not reasonable to expect them to see iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, and then to see watchOS 11 and wonder if Apple just hasn’t updated the Apple Watch software as recently. Apple has, but how would somebody know without a little digging?

At WWDC on June 9—the only plausibly pronounceable way to refer to the Worldwide Developers Conference for four days without making your tongue swell up and poke out of your mouth—Apple cleared up the new naming terminology going forward.

From this fall onward, all Apple operating systems would be numbered by using the last two digits of the year in which it’s released. Or the next full year just after release. It’s a bit fuzzy. While it’s likely we’ll see iOS 26 in October 2025, I suppose it makes sense to call it 26 instead of 25 because there’s only a little of 2025 left after October.

And for Mac… Well, it’s not macOS 26. That’d be weird, given that Mac operating systems have been named for Californian landmarks for over a decade, having been named for animals before that. But Apple compromised here to make Mac play ball, and the next Mac operating system will be known as macOS Tahoe 26. Sounds like one of those weak, regional special trim packages they’d put on a Chevrolet SUV, but whatever.