OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5 Released — Stable Version Expected Within Days

OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5 Released — Stable Version Expected Within Days

February 20, 2026 — The OpenWrt community has announced the fifth and likely final release candidate of the upcoming OpenWrt 25.12 stable series.

OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5 was officially tagged on Thursday, February 19, 2026, bringing the project one significant step closer to its first stable release of 2026.

RC Cadence: A Quick Recap

The 25.12 series has progressed through five release candidates since late December 2025:

Version	Release Date
25.12.0-rc1	December 21, 2025
25.12.0-rc2	January 7, 2026
25.12.0-rc3	January 24, 2026
25.12.0-rc4	February 1, 2026
25.12.0-rc5	February 19, 2026

Notably, rc5 arrived slightly later than originally planned. Lead developer Hauke Mehrtens had initially targeted the previous weekend, but the release was delayed by a few days to address a toolchain issue — specifically, that the fortify source security hardening flag was not being applied to all applications. The fix was integrated before tagging rc5.

According to Mehrtens’ earlier communications on the OpenWrt development mailing list, the plan is to tag the final stable release approximately one week after rc5, meaning the OpenWrt 25.12.0 stable release could arrive as early as the last week of February 2026. Only minor, low-risk changes are expected to land between rc5 and the final release.

What’s New in OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5

Over 4,600 Commits Since Branching

OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5 incorporates over 4,600 commits since the project branched from the previous OpenWrt 24.10 release, representing more than a year of active development.

Expanded Hardware Support

OpenWrt 25.12 now supports over 2,240 devices — up from around 2,180 in the rc4 build and roughly 2,020 in OpenWrt 24.10. This represents the addition of over 220 new hardware boards compared to the previous stable series. Key platform additions include:

Realtek target extended with support for additional switch SoCs, including 10G Ethernet switches
Qualcomm target (qualcommax) extended with support for IPQ50xx and IPQ60xx SoCs — notably bringing broader support for Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6 solutions
Siflower target added for Siflower SF21A6826/SF21H8898 SoCs
Sunxi/ARM926EJS subtarget added for Allwinner F1C100/200s SoCs
MicrochipSW/LAN969x target added for Microchip LAN969x Ethernet switches

Core Component Updates

The rc5 build ships with the following updated core components:

Toolchain:

musl libc 1.2.5
glibc 2.41
gcc 14.3.0
binutils 2.44

Linux Kernel:

Kernel 6.12.71 for all targets (up from 6.12.66 in rc4)

Main Packages:

cfg80211/mac80211 from kernel 6.18.7
hostapd master snapshot (August 2025)
dnsmasq 2.91
dropbear 2025.89
busybox 1.37.0

Notable Feature Highlights

Switch to apk Package Manager: One of the most significant changes in the 25.12 series is the transition from the traditional opkg package manager to apk (Alpine Package Keeper). The OpenWrt opkg fork had become unmaintained, while apk is actively developed and supports most opkg features. Package names have mostly stayed the same, though command-line arguments differ. An official opkg-to-apk cheat sheet is available for users migrating existing setups.

Attended Sysupgrade Now Built-In: The attended sysupgrade (ASU) LuCI application is now installed by default. ASU allows users to upgrade firmware versions and automatically rebuild images with all currently installed packages, preserving system configuration with just a few clicks — no manual intervention required.

Wi-Fi Scripts Rewritten in ucode: The Wi-Fi management scripts have been rewritten in ucode, improving efficiency and maintainability.

Shell History Preserved Across Sessions: Shell command history is now stored in a RAM-backed filesystem, meaning history is no longer lost between logins while avoiding unnecessary writes to flash storage.

OpenWrt Video Feed Integrated: The OpenWrt video feed, which includes Qt5 and UI applications, is now integrated by default.

Upgrade Notes

Upgrading from OpenWrt 24.10 to 25.12 is expected to be straightforward on most devices, with configuration data either preserved as-is or automatically translated on first boot. However, a few things to be aware of:

Sysupgrade from 23.05 to 25.12 is not officially supported. Users on 23.05 should perform a fresh install.
Bananapi BPI-R4 users need to upgrade without saving configuration, as the interfaces eth1 and eth2 have been renamed to sfp-lan/lan4 and sfp-wan respectively to match physical labels.
Cron log level behavior changed: system.@system[0].cronloglevel should be set to 7 for normal logging; 7 is now the default, so no manual action is needed if the option is unset.

Known Issues

LEDs for Airoha AN8855 switches are not yet supported. Devices like the Xiaomi AX3000T will have their switch LEDs powered off.
5GHz Wi-Fi is non-functional on certain devices with ath10k chipsets.
A MediaTek/Filogic Wi-Fi bug has been identified that particularly affects users with recent Pixel phones. This issue may become more visible once 25.12 reaches stable and wider adoption increases.

How to Download

Firmware images for rc5 can be downloaded via the OpenWrt Firmware Selector or directly from the download servers:

Firmware Selector: https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org?version=25.12.0-rc5
Direct Download: https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/25.12.0-rc5/targets/

The startup banner for rc5 reads:

OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5, r32673-482ba7230a

As this remains a release candidate, users are strongly encouraged to test and report any issues via the OpenWrt issue tracker on GitHub before the stable release lands.

Sources: OpenWrt official download server, OpenWrt development mailing list, OpenWrt Forum, GitHub release notes.

OpenWrt 25.12.0-rc5 Released — Stable Version Expected Within Days