Canonical and Ubuntu RISC-V: a 2025 retro and looking forward to 2026

2025: From RISC-V enablement to real execution 

2025 was the year that RISC-V readiness gave way to RISC-V adoption. It’s been quite a journey. What began years ago as early architectural exploration and enablement has matured into real silicon, systems, and deployments. In particular, RVA23 provides a  stable and predictable baseline we can align on with our wider ecosystem of partners. 

At Canonical, we’re committed to making RISC-V a viable option for anyone who wishes to adopt it. We’ve taken deliberate steps to align with the ecosystem and our partners as a trusted software partner that makes RISC-V practical, scalable and production-ready.

Our goal is to provide a stable, predictable, production-grade Linux platform that silicon vendors, OEMs, ODMs, and developers can build on with confidence. 

Let’s take a look at the efforts we have undertaken to empower that vision. 

Raising the bar with RVA23

A major milestone for RISC-V was ecosystem convergence around the RVA23 profile. As a reminder, RVA23 was ratified by RISC-V International in 2024 to align with modern standards for computing architectures and ISA, providing a common feature set for the most demanding modern workloads.

We knew that truly meaningful support for RISC-V meant that we had to keep in step with the latest RISC-V developments. That’s why we made upgrading Ubuntu to RVA23 a priority in 2025 so that Ubuntu users could quickly take advantage of the latest features of RISC-V. Additionally, the adoption of RVA23 ensured that we would:

• Avoid ecosystem fragmentation and keep in step with our hardware partners.
• Enable latest and greatest ISA (instruction set architecture) features in Ubuntu.
• Ensure Ubuntu supports the highest performance on RISC-V hardware.
• Prepare Ubuntu to be robust and ready for emerging RVA23 RISC-V platforms.
• Provide a foundation for RISC-V to run modern workloads.
• Starting with Ubuntu 25.10, RVA23 became the minimum supported baseline. RVA20 users can still get up to 15 years of support, provided they are using Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with Ubuntu Pro. We continue to support existing platforms and have recently enabled new RVA20 boards including Pine64 Star64, StarFive VisionFive 2 Lite, and Milk-V Mars CM  but it’s clear that the ecosystem is  moving toward a modern, unified foundation.

This is typically how architectures mature over time. For a deeper dive into how we enabled support for RVA23 on Ubuntu, check out our explanatory talk.

Ensuring product and user experience parity

Support for RVA23 is just one aspect of our commitment to RISC-V. Our product parity work reflects our continued focus on making RISC-V a first-class citizen, wherever and however you use Ubuntu and other Canonical solutions.

As a result, in 2025 we built upon our support for kernel bring-up, languages, and runtimes. We’re striving for the full range of Canonical’s open source solutions to be available on RISC-V, so that:

• Enterprise users can benefit from Ubuntu Pro, bringing security updates, compliance tooling, device management and long term maintenance.
• Developers will find RISC-V optimized images and tools available for Ubuntu Desktop.
• Scale out and data centre users  benefit from an optimized experience on Canonical cloud products such as MAAS, LXD, MicroCloud and Canonical Kubernetes.
• Users deploying IoT devices can benefit from Ubuntu Core: the immutable, minimal flavor of Ubuntu for embedded devices.

As more vendors ship RISC-V based boards and systems, this parity work becomes ever more critical. System builders can rely on Canonical to provide a uniform experience across ISAs and platforms. 

Visit our dedicated page to browse the latest supported downloads >

Partnerships that move the ecosystem

Canonical’s work was not done alone: 2025 was defined by deep engineering partnerships across the ecosystem. 

What made these collaborations successful was not just that Ubuntu “runs” on the hardware, but the fact that Canonical engineers work in partnership with leading hardware vendors to co-design solutions, validate platforms, and enable cutting edge use cases.

Our work with partners spans from desktops and data centers to high-performance AI chipsets. Here’s a cross-section of some of the work we did in 2025: 

• In the data center, we partnered with Rivos to deliver scalable RISC-V solutions across Rivos platforms. 
• For edge AI and intelligent computing, we collaborated with SIFive and ESWIN  to bring Ubuntu to the EIC7700X SoC, providing a robust foundation for high-performance developer platforms and client computing products.
• To accelerate open-source adoption, we collaborated with Alibaba DAMO Academy to bring Ubuntu to XuanTie processors, providing a unified, secure foundation for developers to scale RISC-V applications globally.

As we collaborate closely with our partners, we are observing them deliver the next wave of hardware capabilities, such as:

• Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) expectations in silicon
• Vector and Matrix extensions for AI/ML and HPC workloads
• Hypervisor maturity for cloud and virtualization use cases

Through our active upstream contributions, Canonical ensures our open-source solutions are aligned with these emerging hardware features, providing a stable path for developers to leverage new silicon capabilities as they mature.

Community as the multiplier

None of this happens without the open source community, RISC-V International, and RISE. From kernel and toolchain maintainers to distro engineers and early adopters, 2025’s progress is the result of large-scale collaboration.

Ubuntu’s success on RISC-V is inseparable from this ecosystem’s health and Canonical continues to support the RISC-V community through our involvement in RISC-V International and RISE. These are important engagements which gather partners together to fund development efforts to raise the maturity level of open source projects. 

Whilst there’s not enough space for us to highlight every event we attended, a standout moment for us was presenting at the RISC-V Summits in China and North America. It was exciting to showcase exactly what users can get from RISC-V when using Ubuntu.

2026: From adoption to scale

If 2025 was all about readiness,  2026 will be about scale. More RISC-V systems will move from labs and pilots into commercial products, from cloud to edge, and Canonical is ready to enable our partners and customers to leverage the best of open source technology and run it seamlessly on RISC-V. 

Key focus areas for us at Canonical will be: 

• Building on our partnership work: we’ll deepen our existing collaborations and onboarding a broader range of hardware vendors to bring Ubuntu to the next generation of RISC-V platforms.
• Closing the product parity gap:  we’ll ensure the additional Canonical portfolio, from cloud-native tools to IoT products runs as seamlessly on RISC-V.
• Delivering Ubuntu 26.04 LTS with RVA23 as our unified, long-term supported baseline, providing a stable platform for vendors moving from labs to commercial production.
• Maintaining leadership in standards alignment and upstream enablement: we’ll work to ensure new silicon capabilities are immediately accessible to the open-source community.
• Empowering the developer community: we’ll continue to partner with SBC partners to make Ubuntu the go-to platform with an amazing out-of-the-box experience for RISC-V development.

RISC-V’s promise has always been about openness, choice and long-term innovation. Canonical is proud to play a long-term role as a builder, collaborator and steward of the RISC-V ecosystem. Ensuring Ubuntu remains the foundation on which RISC-V systems, solutions and products can scale. 

As the momentum behind RISC-V accelerates into 2026, contact us to find out how we can ensure your success.

Further reading

• Download Canonical-built Ubuntu for RISC-V Platforms  
• Ubuntu Summit 26.04 
• SpacemiT announces the availability of Ubuntu on K3/K1 series RISC-V AI computing platforms | Canonical