Herein, we lay out our plans for evolving Genode. Progress in addition to this planning will very much depend on the degree of community support the project will receive. The Challenges page collects some of our ideas to advance Genode in various further directions.

The road map is not fixed. If there is commercial interest of pushing the Genode technology to a certain direction, we are willing to revisit our plans.

Review of 2025

We dedicated the four releases (25.02, 25.05, 25.08, 25.11) of the past year to the maxim "rigidity, clarity, performance".

The year got kicked off with SIMD-based graphics optimizations, which made Genode well usable in multi-monitor and rotated-screen setups. In terms of code rigidity, we were able to proudly announce the elimination of C++ exceptions from the base framework by mid of the year. This was made possible by embracing sum types as error-propagation technique. Thanks to this tireless reconstruction work, we have now gained the luxury of knowing that Genode’s base system has left no error condition unconsidered. Over the course of the year, this new level of rigidity proliferated into the realms of our custom "base-hw" kernel, the virtualization interface, and a growing number of further components.

On the account of clarity, the most prominent development has been the introduction of a new "human-inclined data" (HID) syntax for the configuration and state reporting of components. Besides crafting the code for parsing, generating, and working with the new format, the most delicate challenge had been the planning of a smooth migration path from our time-tested use of XML to the new format. In Autumn, we reported success in that department by offering a special flavor of Sculpt OS capable of seamlessly using the new format. Thanks to the experience and feedback gathered while driving this version day to day with joy, it quickly became clear that there is no going back.

Among the many performance-oriented topics of the year, the results of two long-term developments stood out: the holistic revision of the block-storage stack as well as our new CPU scheduler specifically designed for fairness and low latency. Further highlights of 2025 had been the experimental multi-kernel version of Sculpt OS that gives users the choice between 5 different kernels, the adoption of the Goa SDK for projects hosted at the community-maintained Genode-world repository, and the frictionless update of all Linux-based device drivers to Linux 6.12.

2026 - Building bridges

After a year of pruning and nurturing, it is time again for branching out. Our annual public road-map discussion was started with the suggestion of "building bridges" as guiding theme for the year. Bridges to other open-source projects. Bridges to a variety of programming languages. Bridges to new user demographies. Bridges for the interoperability of applications.

The suggestion was met with overly positive resonance. Great sympathy with Qubes OS was voiced multiple times. Others highlighted the potential of Genode in headless scenarios at data centers, servers, or as VM host. When contemplating these directions, the opinionated Leitzentrale UI of Sculpt OS is not a natural element but may rather stand in the way. A sensible way for building bridges would make the underlying architecture and feature set of Sculpt OS useful for Genode-based systems of different personalities. So this year, we will see the split of Sculpt OS into reusable parts, thereby opening up a new playground for drawing connections to other communities and projects.

The move of Genode to the HID format comes with the natural desire to implement HID parsers for a variety of programming languages. As a matter of honor, those languages should best become available for Genode in the process. So by the end of the year, we will have taken HID to languages that we love, and have taken those languages to Genode. This ambition goes hand in hand with a stepwise approach towards running the Goa SDK self-hosted on Genode.

Besides the "bridges" main theme, the schedule sketched below carries forward several topics of 2025 like IPv6 or improving the flexibility of USB. It also plans for the update of the arsenal of Linux-based drivers, VirtualBox, the Chromium engine, and Qt6.

Milestones for 2026

February - Release 26.02

Migration from GitHub to Codeberg (all but Genode’s main repository)

Human-inclined data (HID) format used by default

Documentation, grammar, test bench for parser implementations

Schema validation

Conversion of Genode’s packages, configurations, run scripts

Client-budgeted allocation of DMA buffers

Window-manager support for touch input

Port of Git at Genode World

May - Release 26.05

Migration from GitHub to Codeberg (Genode’s main repository)

Sculpt 26.04

HID by default, deprecating XML

Cryptographically protected user profiles and system configuration

Native Goa SDK, restricted to Genode API and POSIX

Revisited "Genode Foundations" and "Genode Applications" books

Features of Sculpt OS usable as regular framework functionality (install, deploy, device detection, driver management)

Pluggable USB host-controller drivers

IPv6 for virtual machines

VirtualBox 7

DDE-Linux-based PC drivers updated to version 6.18 LTS

Updated Qt6 and Chromium engine

Goa SDK

Support for automated testing

GnuPG replaced by Sequoia

Custom base-hw kernel

System control (power and thermal management)

Performance optimizations (e.g., tagged TLBs)

August - Release 26.08

Dynamically reconfigurable VFS

GUI access as virtual file system

DDE-Linux-based ARM drivers updated to version 6.18 LTS

Intel Arrow Lake notebooks, BE2xx wifi, Xe-LPG+ graphics

Tracing infrastructure for libc performance analysis

Sculpt OS

Native Goa SDK, support for 3rd-party APIs

Sketch of a capability-based desktop environment

On-screen documentation

Remotely administrable headless VM host

November - Release 26.11

Pre-boot platform discovery and sanitation

IPv6 for native Genode components

USB access-control at USB-interface granularity

Sculpt 26.10

Removed XML support

Interactive USB-device management

Base-hw kernel by default

Goa-SDK publishing support

Streamlined VM deployment

Port of file-manager application

Showcasing a guest OS as alternative administrative user interface

Genode World

MESA and other 3rd-party components maintained as Goa projects

Ports of popular server applications

Libc optimizations (allocator, file-system access)