LibreOffice 26.2.5 Released! Skia Rendering Disabled by Default & Various Fixes

LibreOffice, the office suite that’s default many Linux such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE, released new 26.2.5 version today.

The new version of this free open-source office suite is the fifth maintenance update for the 26.2 branch, which features only bug fixes and stability improvements.

For macOS and Windows, the open-source 2D graphics library Skia rendering that was introduced for better graphics performance since v7.0 is now disabled by default. It’s because that several users reported crashes and hangs due to that rendering library.

For those who want to re-enable it, go to Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice -> Advanced, and enable experimental features, then you will see the option in “View” settings page.

And, Linux (at least Ubuntu) may try setting SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen environment variable or enable Skia rendering in VCL backend using “Expert Configuration” dialog.

Besides moving Skia rendering to experimental mode, LibreOffice 26.2.5 also includes more many bug-fixes.

For the Writer app, it fixes the issues that empty paragraphs supposed to be hidden inside Microsoft Word DOC files became visible, editing a conditional text field could corrupt the field type, Shift + Enter (on the numeric keypad) crashed the app, AutoCorrect misbehavior, as well as small user-interface layout issue.

The Calc app also got some some fixes and stability improvements. It updated the currency formatting database to use the new symbol. And, it fixed an unicode matching regression, wrong result in DROP function, TAKE function edge-case problems, as well as TEXTAFTER() function misbehavior from Excel 365 when the optional match_end parameter was used.

For macOS, this version fixed the failure when opening multiple files at once, and, transparent backgrounds images or shapes became opaque in PDF export and printing.

Other fixes include:

• Malformed font in document can cause app crash or undefined behavior.
• UNO ColorPicker API regression caused setPropertyValues("Color", ...) no longer affected the color dialog.
• HTML export/save incorrectly handled mixed right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) text.
• Accessibility sidebar shortened long messages with “…” instead of wrapping into multiple lines.
• LibreOffice Base did not save column alignment settings in table-style subform.

Get LibreOffice 26.2.5

More about LibreOffice 26.2.5, as well as the download link are available in the official announcement.

Besides the official DEB/RPM packages for Linux in the downloads page, there are also official Flatpak package works in most Linux, and, the official Snap package available in Ubuntu App Center (or Ubuntu Software), though both are not updated at the moment of writing.

For those who prefer Ubuntu PPA, keep an eye on the LibreOffice Fresh PPA maintained by Ubuntu members, which provides DEB packages with better Ubuntu integration.

source https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2026/07/libreoffice-26-2-5-released-skia-rendering-disabled-by-default-various-fixes/