New year, new release - Kali 2026.1 is here! There is everything from a fresh coat of paint to a nod to our roots, with normal ongoing improvements.
Building on from :
- - New mode celebrating BackTrack’s 20th anniversary
- - 8 new programs
2026 Theme Refresh
As with previous 20xx.1 releases, this major update brings our annual theme refresh, a long-standing tradition that keeps the Kali Linux interface as modern and innovative. This year’s release unveils a brand-new theme from the moment you boot. Everything from the boot menu, installer to the login display, and a fresh set of
Graphical Installer
Desktop
New Wallpapers
, the
Kali’s 13th Birthday Event
Kali recently had our 13th birthday. To celebrate this, , it can take some patience to learn about each of them.
The Quieter You Become, The More You Are Able To Hear
Thanks to @BeamOfOldLight and @cr4mb0 from the DAFreqs for creating the puzzles!
New Tools in Kali
It would not be a Kali release without some new tools!
Here is a quick rundown of the 8 new tools which have been added (to the network repositories):
- - Execute Atomic Red Team tests across multiple operating system environments
- - Modern experience for GDB with advanced debugging capabilities
- - Automatic SSTI detection tool with interactive interface
- - Advanced XSS scanner
There have been a total of 25 new packages, 9 removed, and 183 updates. On top of that, w also bump the Kali kernel to 6.18.
Known Issues
Bad news for users of the kali-tools-sdr metapackage (aka. Software Defined Radio): the GNU Radio ecosystem is not in great shape in this release. Tools like gr-air-modes or gqrx-sdr are known to be broken. Maybe other related tools as well. We expect it to be fixed in the next release though, so no need to panic!
Kali NetHunter Updates
We are starting this year fresh with some cleaning, providing improvements to the
Redmi Note 8 (Ginkgo)
The for .
Wardriving with Samsung S10
The Samsung S10 series are now even happier thanks to fixes the use of internal wireless firmware in Kali chroot. That means , and even
KITT is alive and he is hacking all the things!
.
And if AI is your thing, you can read what
Wireless Injection on QCACLD-3.0
Drumroll - the first working patch for injection is landed by .
Kali NetHunter Podcast - Nexmon Team
Meet the Nexmon team! The masters behind wireless injection on internal chipsets. If you ever wondered who are they, and how they started working on firmware reversing, and if you want to listen on the go.
Kali Blog Recap
Since our last release, we have published the following
Kali Documentation:
Anyone and everyone is welcomed to get , sponsored by , sponsored by the , thanks to “@parkard” and “@kmw”.
If you have the disk space and bandwidth, already!
Seasoned Kali Linux users are already aware of this, but for those who are not, we also produce . But we gladly take :
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ echo "deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list
[...]
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade
[...]
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ cp -vrbi /etc/skel/. ~/
[...]
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ [ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && sudo reboot -f
You should now be on Kali Linux 2026.1. We can do a quick check by doing:
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ grep VERSION /etc/os-release
VERSION="2026.1"
VERSION_ID="2026.1"
VERSION_CODENAME="kali-rolling"
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ uname -v
#1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Kali 6.18.12-1kali1 (2026-02-25)
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~]
└─$ uname -r
6.18.12+kali-amd64
NOTE: The output of uname -r may be different depending on the system . We will never be able to fix what we do not know is broken! And Social networks are not bug trackers!
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