Apple May Unveil iOS 26 at WWDC 2025 Instead of iOS 19; Said to Adopt Year-Based Naming Strategy

WWDC 2025 will kick off in June and has been rumoured to be a stage where Apple might unveil iOS 19, its latest OS update for the iPhone, along with more firmware iterations for its devices. However, a recent report indicates that iOS 19 may not arrive at all. While the company will indeed preview the upcoming iOS firmware, it is said to be not known as iOS 19 at all. The report suggests that Apple will be changing its naming convention (or nomenclature) strategy for iOS.

Apple to Preview iOS 26 Instead of iOS 19

It has been known for some time that Apple could make some big changes this year when it comes to its operating systems. But while this was previously thought to be applicable to the core design or functionality, the change may begin from the nomenclature itself. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that the Cupertino-based tech giant could move away from an iteration-based strategy towards an year-based one when it comes to the naming of its OS updates.

This potentially means OS updates will reportedly be known by the year it is introduced instead of a version number, the journalist said, citing anonymous sources familiar with the plans. Hence, iOS 19 is expected to be called iOS 26, iPadOS 19 will be iPadOS 26, macOS 16 could be macOS 26, and so on and so forth. The company is reported to use the upcoming year instead of the current one while naming its firmware versions.

The following replacements of Apple's updates are likely to be previewed at WWDC 2025:

Notably, Apple's OS updates are accompanied by different versions as they did not launch at the same time. Thus, iOS 18 is the latest update for the iPhone while macOS 15 ships with all Mac devices. Meanwhile, the recently introduced Apple Vision Pro runs on the visionOS 2 firmware. Thus, Apple is said to be making this change to bring “consistency to its branding” and to get rid of a naming approach that could be confusing to customers and developers alike.

This change, along with all of the features, is expected to be previewed at the WWDC 2025 keynote which takes place on June 9.