OpenBSD 8.0 released as project's 61st version with WPA3 and 64-vCPU VMs
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
The OpenBSD project released version 8.0, its 61st release, on Oct 20, 2026.
The security-focused OS adds WPA3 Wi-Fi and 64-vCPU VMs, so admins should plan upgrades.
Background
OpenBSD is a free, Unix-like operating system known for putting security first; the project also builds OpenSSH and maintains LibreSSL. Theo de Raadt is credited as copyright holder 1997-2026 on the 8.0 page and authored the release post. Version 8.0 arrives six months after 7.9, and the project says it is proud of a record of more than thirty years with only two remote holes in the default install.
How it unfolded
- Oct 19, 2026A Hacker News item noted the 8.0 release would carry inteldrm/radeondrm/amdgpu drivers from Linux 6.18.
- Oct 20, 2026OpenBSD 8.0 was officially released, the project's 61st release, with release notes listing OpenSSH 10.6 and LibreSSL 4.4.0.
- Oct 20, 2026The amd64 kernel virtual address space was raised from 4G to 512G, arm64 hibernate support was added, and swap encryption was sped up using AES CPU instructions.
- Oct 20, 2026vmm/vmd gained multi-processor guest support up to 64 VCPUs per VM, drm(4) moved to Linux 6.18.53 with Intel Arc A-Series support, and WPA3 Wi-Fi support was added.
- Oct 20, 2026loongson architecture support was retired and sparc64 switched to the LLVM toolchain; 13,060 packages were built for amd64.
- Oct 20, 2026An errata for 8.0 was already published on the day of release.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- The OpenBSD project said it is pleased to announce the official release of 8.0, its 61st release, and remains proud of a record of more than thirty years with only two remote holes in the default install.
- Caution
- A Reddit r/openbsd post reminded users to update packages with pkg_add -u and run syspatch, noting an errata was already out on release day.
- Analysts
- Tech AI Wire said that for anyone running OpenBSD on firewalls, routers or servers, this is the version to plan an upgrade to.
Still unverified
Tech AI Wire reported that OpenSSH 10.6 adds an experimental post-quantum signature type, mldsa44-ed25519.