Ubuntu 22.04, the next LTS (Long Term Support), will be released on April 21, 2022. Codenamed “Jammy Jellyfish”.
Though the development of Ubuntu 22.04 does not begin, the Ubuntu Community has announced the release schedule for it.
Usually, Ubuntu released in April of even-year is a long term support edition with 5-year support circle. Like Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 will be a LTS release.
The development will start in October. New features, packages, and APIs will be included until February 24 in 2022. The UI (user interface) of pre-installed apps, desktop appearance, artwork and user-visible strings is scheduled to freeze in March 17.
And Ubuntu 22.04 Beta is scheduled for March 31. In the next weeks, there will be Kernel freeze, release candidate, and the final release planned for April 21.
GNOME 42:
For those care about the next LTS, you may noticed that Ubuntu 22.04 is expected to ship GNOME 42 which is planned for release in March 2022. Also there are PHP8.1, OpenSSL3, Mesa 22.0, and Ubuntu team has being discussed switch to PipeWire though not decided.
However, the developer team planned to avoid GTK4! As you may know, GNOME developers are literally converting the most core apps to GTK4 plus libadwaita. But, libadwaita currently does not allow for theming or coloring. And, Gnome’s new dark style preference is not well tested for ‘Yaru’ theme. So, Ubuntu 22.04 will probably have GNOME 42 with less GTK4 apps. See this thread for more.Ubuntu 22.04 Release Schedule Table:
Keep in mind that that these dates are not fixed and are subject to change.
| Date | 22.04 Events |
| October 21, 2021 | Toolchain Uploaded |
| December 23, 2021 | Ubuntu Testing Week (optional) |
| February 24, 2022 | Feature Freeze, Debian Import Freeze |
| March 03, 2022 | Ubuntu Testing Week (optional) |
| March 17, 2022 | User Interface Freeze |
| March 24, 2022 | Documentation String Freeze, Kernel Feature Freeze |
| March 28, 2022 | Beta Freeze, Hardware Enablement Freeze |
| March 31, 2022 | Beta (mandatory) |
| April 07, 2022 | Kernel Freeze, Non Language Pack Translation Deadline |
| April 14, 2022 | Final Freeze, Release Candidate, Language Package Translation Deadline |
| April 21, 2022 | Final Release |