Stellar Yardstick, Protocol 26 upgrade guide

This guide is designed to help businesses and developers prepare for Yardstick, Protocol 26, with key dates, release information, a changelog, and more.

Stay up to date on any and all Yardstick-related announcements on the Stellar Developer Discord, where the ecosystem coordinates and shares information about the upgrade.

Key dates

• April 8, 2026: Stable releases available.
• April 16, 2026, 1700 UTC: Testnet upgrade.
• May 6, 2026, 1700 UTC: Mainnet upgrade vote.

If you use a Stellar SDK

For your Testnet integration, upgrade to the latest version of the relevant Stellar SDK before April 16, 2026. For your Mainnet integration, upgrade to the latest version of relevant Stellar SDKs before May 6, 2026.

If you run Stellar infrastructure (Stellar Core, Horizon, RPC, Galexie)

Install Protocol 26 releases after they are available April 8, 2026. If you use Docker images, pull the Protocol 26 builds from the Docker registry. If you build from source or our Debian packages, make sure to also update your stellar-core, stellar-horizon, and stellar-rpc binaries to the Protocol 26 builds.

Ubuntu

By April 8, 2026, we will publish images for Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 22.04. To build from source you can refer to the Installation Instructions for installation steps. Package-based installation is also described in the Stellar documentation.

Docker

By April 8, 2026, we will publish the Stellar Core Docker images for Protocol 26, and the Docker-based installation is also described in the Stellar documentation.

If you run a validator

The Protocol 26 upgrade vote is scheduled for May 6, 2026. You should arm your validator with the following command:

upgrades?mode=set&upgradetime=2026-05-06T1700:00:00Z&protocolversion=26

Below are up-to-date links to all available releases relevant to Protocol 26. These releases should be available by April 8, 2026. In general, please make sure to check release notes for specific instructions and requirements, and unless otherwise indicated, opt for the “Latest Release.”

Stellar infrastructure

• Stellar Core
• Horizon
• RPC
• Galexie

SDKs

• Rust SDK
• JavaScript Base
• JavaScript SDK
• Go SDK (rpcclient & horizonclient & txnbuild)
• Java
• Python
• iOS
• PHP
• C# .NET
• Flutter
• Elixir Stellar SDK

To stay up to date on any and all Yardstick-related announcements, join the Stellar Developer Discord, where the ecosystem coordinates and shares information about the upgrade in the #protocol-next channel.