OpenWrt 25.12: what changed since 24.10 and when to upgrade

Out since March 2026; 25.12.6 is the current service release. Over 2200 supported devices.

In one sentence

OpenWrt 25.12 is the current stable series. The 25.12.0 images are dated 2026-03-03, and 25.12.6 (2026-10-18) is the latest service release at the time of writing.

What changed since 24.10

Package manager. apk replaces opkg. Few package names changed, but the command-line arguments are different. See apk replaces opkg.
Kernel. Every target runs Linux 6.12: 6.12.71 in 25.12.0 and 6.12.112 in 25.12.6. 24.10 used 6.6. See kernel and toolchain.
Toolchain. GCC 14.3.0, binutils 2.44, musl 1.2.5, glibc 2.41.
Upgrades. The attended sysupgrade LuCI app is installed by default. On devices with larger flash, owut is included too.
Under the hood. The Wi-Fi scripts were rewritten in ucode, and shell history is now kept in a RAM-backed filesystem.
Hardware. Over 2200 supported devices, more than 180 of them new. New targets include siflower, sunxi/arm926ejs and microchipsw/lan969x.

The release is named “Dave’s Guitar” in honour of Dave Täht, and it brings over 4700 commits since 24.10.

Should you upgrade?

On 24.10: the 25.12.0 announcement says 24.10 gets no security updates after September 2026. Plan the move.
On 23.05: upgrading straight from 23.05 to 25.12 with sysupgrade is not officially supported. Read the release notes before you choose a path.
On vendor or third-party firmware: check what you actually run first, with Which OpenWrt is this?.

Before any upgrade, take a backup and keep a wired path to the router. Firmware upgrade walks through it.

See it on your router

These commands only read:

cat /etc/openwrt_release
uname -r

DISTRIB_RELEASE shows the release, and uname -r shows the kernel version.

Sources

Router.Homes

Independent OpenWrt notes. Every page states the firmware, device, package manager and way back.

Icons: Solar by 480 Design, CC BY 4.0