The OpenStack community has released OpenStack 2026.1 (Gazpacho). The release places a heavy emphasis on operational simplicity, live migration for workloads on VMware, and hardware flexibility.
One might wish to describe OpenStack as a sovereign alternative to American hyperscalers as well as VMware and Nutanix. While open-source offerings and sovereign ones are far from equivalent, there’s at least some reason to see OpenStack as a potential option. Forty percent of contributions came from European, which the OpenInfra Foundation attributes to growing digital sovereignty initiatives across the region.
OpenStack contains a treasure trove of associated solutions, now housed under the OpenInfra Foundation. There’s enough to fill a grab bag of private cloud, edge and virtualization needs, including Kata Containers, StarlingX and CI/CD platform Zuul.
VMware replacement remains a focal point
Parallel live migrations in Nova are among the most requested additions from operators seeking a VMware alternative, OpenStack suggests. The feature allows multiple memory transfer connections simultaneously, speeding up workload movement considerably. Live migration with vTPM is also included, enabling secure migration of sensitive workloads such as Windows 11 guests. An earlier ‘Dalmatian’ release had already drawn in more users departing from VMware following Broadcom’s acquisition two years ago. Gazpacho continues on that trajectory.
In Ironic, the autodetect deploy interface removes the need to choose deployment methods manually, while trait-based port scheduling automates network placement based on real infrastructure attributes. The Neutron OVN driver gains BGP support, North-South routing for external ports, and allowed address pairs with virtual MAC addresses. Cyborg now includes a new driver configuration guide covering FPGA, GPU, NIC, QAT, SSD, and PCI passthrough accelerator types.
Upgrades simplified via SLURP
Gazpacho is a Skip Level Upgrade Release Process (SLURP) release, meaning operators can upgrade just once per year rather than every six months. Operators currently running 2025.1 Epoxy can upgrade to Gazpacho directly. The preceding 2025.2 Flamingo release focused on eliminating technical debt and advancing confidential computing, making Gazpacho a more feature-forward step.
“OpenStack remains a trusted and mature foundation for building secure, sovereign and adaptable cloud infrastructure,” said Thierry Carrez, general manager of the OpenInfra Foundation. The next OpenStack release, 2026.2 Hibiscus, is expected in September 2026.