Apple is set to make a significant shift in the way it names its operating systems. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company plans to introduce a unified versioning approach across all of its platforms starting this year. Instead of the traditional sequential numbers, Apple will align its OS version numbers with calendar years — meaning iOS 19 will be skipped entirely in favor of iOS 26.
This change will apply across the entire Apple ecosystem:
- iOS 26 (instead of iOS 19)
- iPadOS 26 (instead of iPadOS 19)
- macOS 26 (instead of macOS 16)
- watchOS 26 (instead of watchOS 12)
- tvOS 26 (instead of tvOS 19)
- visionOS 26 (instead of visionOS 3)
The goal of this new naming convention is to ensure consistency across devices, eliminating the confusion caused by differing version numbers on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other Apple hardware. Until now, each OS followed its own versioning timeline, but the new structure reflects Apple’s unified approach to its ecosystem.
The reason behind jumping straight to “26” is that Apple sees this version as covering both 2025 and 2026. Instead of releasing iOS 25 in 2025, the company has opted to name it in line with the coming year, hence iOS 26.
Apple is expected to announce this new system during the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which kicks off on Monday, June 9. Alongside the new naming, a major redesign inspired by the visual style of visionOS will also be introduced across all Apple platforms.