Umbraco update: Umbraco 17 now in beta

Another week, another Umbraco update! Following swiftly on from our recent Umbraco round-up post covering the pricing for 2026, new UK office and other recent news, Umbraco HQ has now announced Umbraco 17 is now in beta. With characteristic Umbraco modesty, the announcement lets us know that the release is “less scary than it sounds”.

In this brief post we explore what is in the new release as well as its expected timetable.

Beta is actually a new phase for Umbraco releases

One notable development about the announcement is the concept of the “Beta” phase itself. Previously this pre-release phase was called the “Release Candidate” but this caused some confusion, so now for every release from 17 onwards there will be three release phases:

• Beta: occurring six weeks before final release, where all features have all been developed and there is just work on bug fixes.
• Release Candidate: occurring about four weeks before launch, which identifies any regression issues based on feedback from the professional Umbraco community
• Final release: For Umbraco 17 this should be around the end of November.

Umbraco 17 is a new Long-Term Supported (LTS) release

As a new LTS release, Umbraco 17 incorporates all the changes and new features over two years introduced since the last LTS, which in this case was Umbraco 13.

Because this is an LTS, some customers may have been waiting to upgrade to this new release. This means they will introduce several major new elements, including the backoffice which has been rebuilt from the ground up with a new UI. For more information about the core features of previous releases, see our previous posts:

• What are the main features of Umbraco 14? 
• Umbraco update: From the release of Umbraco 15 to the launch of Umbraco Engage
• Exploring the latest Umbraco product update 
• Seven takeaways from the 2025 Umbraco Codegarden keynote

It may be a substantial upgrade from Umbraco 13 to 17

The announcement goes into some detail of what to expect in terms of effort if you are upgrading. In summary:

• If you are upgrading from 15 or 16, it should be “straightforward”
• Going from 13 to 17 will be more substantial, but the extent of the effort depends on various criteria.
• The most effort associated with upgrading from 13 to 17 is if you have any custom extensions or if you have any third-party packages that are not compatible with the latest version.

If you’re using a pre-13 version, then we recommend speaking to your digital agency partner about upgrading, or feel free to chat with us.

Umbraco 17 comes with a smattering of new features

More detail will be available soon when the Release Candidate drops, but there are some new capabilities including support for Microsoft .NET 10, more consistent handling of dates across the platform, and also the introduction of load balancing for the backoffice.

Want to discuss Umbraco 17?

Because it is a LTS release, the launch of Umbraco 17 is significant. Need to discuss the new release and whether you should upgrade? Get in touch!