Umbraco 18 Release

The “short and sweet” Major Release.

Written by Bolette Kern

Umbraco 18 is a short and sweet release. Short, because there's not a lot of new ground to cover. One headline feature, Elements, and we'll get to it. Sweet, because the headline feature isn’t the only good news here: Umbraco 17 LTS is still the home to many projects, still supported, and still where the focus is - and all the great improvements to 17 are of course also in 18. Let's start with the “sweet” part:

Or go straight to the Unboxing Umbraco 18 video for a tour of this new major version:

The sweet part: Umbraco 17 LTS is still home

Most teams are on Umbraco 17, or heading there, and that's exactly where we want them to be. Umbraco 17 is our Long-Term Supported version, and we're keeping our focus on it with new minor releases roughly every six weeks. So Umbraco 17 stays maintained, supported, and evolving throughout its lifetime.

That has a practical upside worth being clear about: many of the improvements arriving around this release land in Umbraco 17 minors too, not only in 18. So staying on or upgrading to 17 doesn't mean missing out. For agencies guiding clients through an upgrade decision, especially those still on Umbraco 13 (EOL, Dec 14, 2026), Umbraco 17 remains the stable, well-supported place to land.

Your situation	What version to pick
Settled on Umbraco 17 LTS, no immediate need for Elements	Stay on Umbraco 17 LTS
You want the new Library and Elements features now	Move to Umbraco 18
You're waiting for fully reusable blocks	Plan for Umbraco 19, Q4 2026
Still on Umbraco 13	Upgrade to Umbraco 17 +, book Extended Long-Term Support

Umbraco 18 is a Standard-Term Support release. Moving to it is straightforward if you want what's new, and staying on 17 is just as valid a choice. Both are sweet places to be.

The short part: Introducing the Library

The one feature headline of Umbraco 18 is a new section in the backoffice, the Library, and the first thing to live there is Elements.

Create and manage Elements in the new Library section in Umbraco Backoffice

Elements are content pieces that don't have a URL of their own, but that get reused across a site. The underlying model will be familiar if you've been building with Umbraco for a while. Element Types have existed for years, but they've only supported the structure of Blocks. From Umbraco 18, Element types can be used to create Elements, a new entity that can be managed on its own.

In practice: on an Element Type, there's a new "allow in Library" toggle. Switch it on, and editors can create instances of that type directly in the Library. Those instances are Elements.

Pick your Element on any piece of content, with the new Element Picker.

What ships in Umbraco 18:

Elements, the first non-routable content type to live in the Library
Full management, create, delete, move, and publish, with the same permissions and rollback you already rely on elsewhere in the CMS
An Element Picker, for selecting Elements on whatever page you need them

Why this matters for the sites you build

If you build for clients, you've probably solved this problem yourself already. To handle reusable content, a promotional teaser, a repeated call-to-action, a snippet that appears in ten places, teams have long created a "library" or "global" node in the content tree and tucked template-less doc types inside it. It works, but those items were never meant to be routable, never going to have a template, never really meant to sit in the content tree. It was a workaround, repeated project after project.

Umbraco 18 turns that into a feature instead of a pattern you reinvent each time. Reusable content now has a native, governed place to belong, with the management and permissions your editors already understand. For agencies, that's less custom scaffolding to build and maintain, and a more consistent foundation to hand to the editors using the site every day.

Setting expectations: this is the foundation

It's worth being precise about scope, because it shapes how you talk to clients about it. Umbraco 18 introduces the Library and the Element Picker. That's the foundation.

The point where reusable content really proves itself is Umbraco 19, when Elements integrate directly into the Block Editors, because blocks are where reuse matters most. Picture a Black Friday teaser that gets copy-pasted across pages today. In that future, you create it once in the Library, insert it where it's needed, and when "Black Friday" becomes "Summer Sale," you update it once, and it changes everywhere.

So if a client's main interest is that connected, edit-once-update-everywhere experience, Umbraco 19 is the version to plan toward. What you get in 18 is the native foundation it's built on, and a genuinely useful place to manage reusable content in its own right.

The Library is also designed to grow. Over time, we expect it to become the central home for reusable, non-routable content, with room for things like tag management, document blueprints, and translations alongside Elements.

Short and sweet. A new place for reusable content if you want it, and if Umbraco 17 is already home or the ideal home for your project, you can stay right where you are.

Want to dive deeper?

This post is the short version on purpose. If you'd like more, two recent posts pick up where this one stops:

Umbraco 18 Release Candidate. The technical companion to this release. It covers Elements in more depth, the developer-facing changes (typed OpenAPI schemas for the Delivery API, the move from Swashbuckle to Microsoft.AspNetCore.OpenApi, and the breaking changes to plan for), plus a thorough rundown of everything that landed in the Umbraco 17.x minors and ships with 18 too, including performance improvements, configurable output caching, lightweight external-only members, better AI support, modular deployments, and a long list of backoffice refinements. If you're scoping an upgrade or want the full feature list, start here.

If you want to dive deeper into the new Element functionality, I highly recommend watching the Codegarden session “It’s Elemental; reuse your content!” by Kenn Jacobsen, Principal Engineer at Umbraco.

If you want to be updated more broadly on new and upcoming features in Umbraco CMS, the Codegarden talk “Our Roadmap, Your CMS: Umbraco 17 Released and What We're Building Next” by Andy Butland, Head of CMS, is a must-watch!

Q2 2026 Product Update — Codegarden Keynote Highlights. The wider view across the whole platform. Beyond the CMS, it covers what's coming on Umbraco Cloud (including load balancing), the new open-source automation product Umbraco Automate, the latest on AI in Umbraco, and updates across Commerce, Engage, Deploy, and Compose. If you want to know where the platform as a whole is heading, this is the one to read.

Start using Umbraco 18 today

If you want to get your hands on the new Library section and Elements features, you can get your hands on 18 today:

Get started quickly:

Spin up a new project on Umbraco Cloud

One-click setup and hosting for Umbraco projects, fully updated for Umbraco 18. Take a trial or sign in on Umbraco Cloud.

Download Umbraco 18

The latest version is available on NuGet.

Explore the documentation

Our documentation for Umbraco 18 covers everything you need to know to get started and set things up. Start reading and learning at docs.umbraco.com.