Debian Opens the Call for Debian 14 "forky" Desktop Artwork
Debian 14 is still months away from shipping, but the project is already searching for the look it will use once it arrives. The Debian Desktop Team has opened its official call for artwork proposals for the "forky" cycle, with submissions due by November 26, 2026.
The notice was written by Jonathan Carter on behalf of the team and pushed to the debian-desktop and debian-devel-announce mailing lists on July 12. It apparently never landed on the wider announce board, so the team re-sent it. They also stretched the deadline out to November 26, roughly two months from the restatement.
"So, if you would like (or know someone who would like) to create a desktop look and feel that will be seen by trillions of people, be sure to send in your artwork ASAP!"
That line isn't quite hyperbole by Debian's standards. The winning theme shows up everywhere: the boot splash, the login manager, the desktop wallpaper, installer banners, system branding. It's easily one of the most visible community-design programs in open source, and the team points to Emerald, Homeworld, Joy, Lines, softWaves and futurePrototype as past themes that actually hit the mark.
Why forky is shaping up to be a big one
The artwork call might seem like a cosmetic detour, but forky is carrying real weight this cycle. Debian's Release Team has made reproducible builds mandatory starting with forky. Migration software now blocks any package that can't be built bit-for-bit identically from the same source, environment and instructions. Non-reproducible packages simply won't move into testing.
On top of that, LoongArch64 is joining as an official architecture alongside amd64, arm64, armhf, riscv64, ppc64el and s390x. APT is also getting native rollback, undo and history commands in version 3.2, finally aligning Debian with the Red Hat crowd. In short, forky is aiming to be one of the broadest Debian releases ever in terms of both hardware reach and build integrity.
Forky takes its name from the googly-eyed spork in Toy Story 4. Not exactly a heavyweight character, which makes it a decent fit for a release that's quietly stacking up heavyweight features.
The judging, sort of
New criteria for forky aren't spelled out, so the team is leaning on its usual yardstick: which theme feels most "Debian." The call itself concedes that's "not the most defined concept, since everyone has their own take on what Debian means to them."
Practicality weighs just as heavily as vibes. The team says it wants to steer clear of themes "that would require heavy GTK+ theming and patching GDM/GNOME." The goal is something that plugs in cleanly without rewriting core software, and that holds up a year down the road rather than grating on you by December 2027.
The current default, Ceratopsian, came out of six submissions in a public poll that drew 2,817 votes. Its creator, Elise Couper, reportedly sketched the piece on paper and pencil before finishing it digitally in Inkscape. Carter's notice took time this round to thank Couper for trixie's look.
What to watch
Head here to the official wiki page for the forky cycle, where you can track the shortlist and public poll once they drop. The forky release itself is expected to land sometime between June and August 2027, following Debian's roughly two-year cadence since Buster. No freeze is scheduled yet, and the project says it will announce at least 14 days ahead of time.
