New report clarifies whether Microsoft is indeed releasing Windows "12" in 2026

This week, the rumor mill on Windows "12", which is what the community casually calls the next major Windows OS revision, was spinning hard as a report from a reputed tech media outlet, PCWorld, set off a frenzy of news reporting and sharing about the possible release of Windows 12 this year.

In the article, PCWorld had used the phrase "PCWorld reports that Windows 12, codenamed ‘Hudson Valley Next’, may launch in 2026...." with no backlinks and citations to external sources; as such, other outlets started believing that it was an original breaking story from PCWorld itself.

Although Neowin was also tipped about this by one of our readers, we did not immediately jump on board to publish a story as we felt something was off. Our guess was right as PCWorld has now clarified that it was a big error on its part since it was a mistranslation of an article on its German counterpart site PC-Welt.

An editor's note by Brad Chacos, PCWorld executive editor, has been added that clarifies this: "This article is a translation of a German article by PC-Welt. It does not meet PCWorld’s standards and should not have been published. The first version did not include any source links or attributions and was written in a way that suggested it was original reporting. It is not. We contacted PC-Welt and added sourcing after the initial publication. It still does not meet PCWorld’s publication standards, but we’re keeping the article live for the public record. We’re examining internal processes for PC-Welt and PCWorld alike to ensure a situation like this never happens again. I’m sorry."

The snippet, which caused the confusion about original reporting, has also been updated to reflect this as it now states: "PCWorld analyzes emerging clues about Windows 12, expected to launch in 2026..."

It is always great to see sites come out and clarify when they are wrong, although in our world of tech reporting, these things can and do happen since many of the most interesting stories start off as rumors, and it is always fun to speculate, since at the end of the day, most tech journalists, like their readerships, are also nerds and geeks who love to think of what could be.

Windows 12 rumors are not new as they first started surfacing somewhere around July of 2022, when it was being reported that Microsoft was going back to a three-year release cadence, with a desktop UI design leak later that offered more credibility.

Since then there have been more rumors and speculation including ones related to Intel, a subscription-based OS, among others. One of the most believable stories was published in 2024, which suggested that Microsoft was going to push Windows 12 as an AI-focused OS with dedicated hardware becoming a necessity to run such features.

While technically that did happen, it was just on Windows 11 itself as part of version 24H2, and so Windows 12 did not roll out. Hence, so far, there is no credible evidence to suggest a Windows 12 launch is near, and we are likely going to get a Windows 11 version 26H2.

Source: PCWorld

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Posted Thursday 5 March 2026 at 6:14 pm AEST (my time).

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