Mesa 26.0.0 ships Vulkan 1.4 targets and RADV ray tracing performance work
Mesa 26.0.0 is now available as the latest feature release of the open-source graphics stack used on Linux and other environments, including within Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux. The release announcement lists support targets that include Vulkan 1.4, OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL ES 3.2, and OpenCL 3.0, alongside the usual driver updates across the project.
Raytracing improvements for AMD hardware
A big focus this cycle is AMD Radeon ray tracing on Vulkan. The official release notes call out ray tracing performance work for RADV since Mesa 25.3, with contributions credited in part to Valve’s Linux graphics efforts. Back in January , Mesa developer Natalie Vock published a deep dive on RADV RT pipeline compilation changes in Mesa 26.0, describing a move toward proper function calls and separating previously inlined shader work, with an example claim of more than 2x faster RT passes in Ghostwire Tokyo on her test path.
“On top of that, runtime performance improves by a lot [in affected applications] as well. Who knew that inlining hundreds of shaders into an incredibly hot loop might be bad for performance?! From quick napkin math, I think the pure RT performance in Ghostwire Tokyo improves by over 2x. In any case, FPS goes from ~30 to ~40 on my 7900XTX.
— Natalie Vock, Mesa developer
Source: AMD
Vulkan updates for Intel and NVIDIA and KosmicKrisp
Mesa 26.0 adds a long list of small Vulkan driver updates across different GPUs, not just AMD. The main idea is simple, more Vulkan features are now supported, and some older “optional” features are now treated as standard where the drivers already had them. That includes new maintenance updates for Intel ANV, NVIDIA NVK, and AMD RADV, plus a few driver-specific additions like a new custom resolve option for RADV and discard rectangle support for NVK.
I’m happy to announce a new feature release, Mesa 26.0.0!
Mesa is the open source 3D graphics library, which includes implementations of Vulkan 1.4, OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0, and more APIs.
Since Mesa 25.3, RADV has seen significant raytracing performance improvements.
Its `RADV_DEBUG` environment variable has removed the following deprecated options: invariantgeom, nodynamicbounds, nongg_gs and splitfma. Use the driconf variables radv_invariant_geom, radv_no_dynamic_bounds, radv_disable_ngg_gs, and radv_split_fma instead.
RadeonSI switched to ACO by default for better and faster ISA code generation and better GPU performance and better compile times.
This release also introduces KosmicKrisp, a Vulkan to Metal layered driver for macOS.
— Eric Engestrom
Mesa 26.0 also introduces “KosmicKrisp”, which is a Vulkan-to-Metal layered driver for macOS. On the mobile side, there are updates for drivers like Qualcomm Adreno, PowerVR, and PanVK, plus some HDR-related fixes.
If you want the upstream download, Mesa publishes the source tarball and signature on its archive site. Most people will get Mesa 26.0 through normal distro updates instead. Mesa’s release calendar lists February 11, 2026 for 26.0.0, and shows Mesa 25.3.6 planned for February 18, 2026 as the last 25.3 bug-fix release.
Source: Freedesktop via Phoronix , GamingOnLinux
