Arch Linux has released its September 2026 monthly snapshot, shipping Linux 7.2.2 kernel in a 1.5 GB ISO intended for new installations only. The ecosystem now hosts roughly 15,770 official packages and over 49,000 AUR scripts, though users should note recent infrastructure changes like the nftables backend and a June AUR malicious package incident. 

Arch Linux ships 2026.09.01 ISO with Linux 7.2.2 kernel

The rolling release distro lands its 1.5 GB snapshot, marking the first time a 7.2 series kernel graces a monthly ISO, alongside a host of infrastructure shifts and a reminder to review your PKGBUILDs.

Arch Linux has released its September 2026 monthly snapshot. The new ISO is 1.5 GB and ships Linux Kernel 7.2.2. If you're running an existing Arch installation, stop reading and run pacman -Syu. Don't bother downloading this unless you're doing a fresh install. For new setups, however, this is the one to grab.

Infrastructure shifts and warnings

There's been a lot of movement in the ecosystem since mid-2025. If you're planning a fresh install, most of this won't bite you. Existing users should pay attention.

The iptables default backend switched to nftables in April. NVIDIA's 590 driver dropped Pascal and older GPU support and moved the main packages to Open Kernel Modules. Varnish was renamed to vinyl-cache in May, which breaks things for everyone. There was also a malicious package incident in the AUR back in June. High volume of malicious adoptions and updates were detected. If you pull from the AUR, review your PKGBUILD changes. Don't just trust the latest version without a look.

The project leadership remains steady. Levente Polyák won re-election as Project Lead on June 4, 2026. He's serving a second consecutive two-year term. The copyright notice now reads 2002–2026. Vinet, Griffin, and Polyák have kept this going for 24 years.

The official repositories hold roughly 15,770 packages. The AUR contains over 49,000 build scripts. It's one of the largest software collections among Linux distributions.

Downloading and verifying

Head here to grab the ISO. You can also grab it via HTTP from the mirror network. The project maintains hundreds of mirrors across 50+ countries, backed by CDNs like Fastly and Hetzner. If you're using Docker, docker run -it archlinux is still available. WSL users can run wsl --install archlinux.

While Arch Linux remains a do-it-yourself distro, the included archinstall script has significantly streamlined the setup process, marking a substantial improvement over traditional manual installation.