Ubuntu Server Download: Which LTS Version to Pick, and Where It Lives on a Cloud Server

Downloading Ubuntu Server means picking from three supported LTS releases, plus the interim releases that sit between them. The answer is nearly always the newest LTS, though the exceptions are real, and on a cloud provider there is no ISO to download at all.

Which Ubuntu Server Version to Download Right Now #

Download Ubuntu Server 26.04.1 LTS. It is the current Long Term Support release, it is the version the download button on ubuntu.com hands you, and it is supported with free security updates until May 2031.

Two situations change that answer. If you are adding a machine to a fleet that already runs 24.04, take 24.04.5 LTS and keep the fleet uniform, because managing two releases costs more than the newer kernel is worth. If a vendor package you depend on has not published a build for the newest release yet, take the release it does support and revisit in six months. Everything else, including “I want the safest option”, points at 26.04.1.

What you should not download for a server is an interim release, and right now there is not even a supported one to be tempted by. Canonical’s meta-release file, the same file do-release-upgrade reads, marked 25.10 as unsupported when this was checked on 9 September 2026, and every release it still lists as supported is an LTS. The next section explains why that does not matter for a server.

What LTS Means and Why a Server Never Runs an Interim Release #

Ubuntu ships a release every six months, in April and October, and each one is one of two kinds. LTS releases come out every two years, always in April of an even year, and get five years of standard security maintenance, extended by a further five years of Expanded Security Maintenance through Ubuntu Pro, which is free for personal use on a handful of machines. Every other release is an interim release, maintained for nine months.

Nine months is the number that settles it. An interim release stops receiving security updates roughly three quarters of a year after it appears. 25.10 is the worked example: it arrived in October 2025 and was already out of support by the time this was written, so a server built on it would have needed a full release upgrade before its first birthday. Canonical’s own release documentation puts interim releases in the “latest software features” category, which is a desktop and development framing, not a server one.

The point releases you see in the filenames, the .1 in 26.04.1 or the .5 in 22.04.5, are not separate versions. They are the same release with all published updates rolled into the installer image, so you install with fewer packages to patch on first boot. Always take the highest point release available for the LTS you have chosen.

26.04 vs 24.04 vs 22.04: Choosing by Situation #

All three are still supported, so this is a judgement call rather than a correctness one. If you are not sure which release an existing machine is running, check the Ubuntu version from the command line before you decide what to match.

22.04 is the interesting case, because its standard security maintenance ends in May 2027 and that is close enough to matter. It is not automatically a bad choice: Ubuntu Pro extends security coverage on it to 2032, and Pro is free for personal use on up to five machines, or fifty for Ubuntu Community members. If you have one or two legacy boxes that cannot move yet, attaching them to a free Pro subscription is a real answer rather than a stopgap. If you are building something new, you are choosing a release whose free window closes in under a year, which is a strange place to start.

The other thing worth knowing before you commit is that the LTS-to-LTS upgrade path does not open the moment a new release exists. Ubuntu’s upgrader is gated on Canonical publishing a meta-release file, and on a machine set to the lts prompt it only offers the next LTS once that has happened. You can ask a running server what it is currently offered without changing anything:

do-release-upgrade -c

We ran that on stock cloud images of all three releases on 7 September 2026 and again on 3 October 2026, and the answer changed in between. A 22.04 machine is offered the jump to 24.04, by October to the 24.04.5 point release:

Checking for a new Ubuntu release
New release '24.04.5 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

On 7 September a 24.04 machine was not offered 26.04 at all, even though 26.04.1 had been published and the usual rule of thumb is that the path opens at the first point release. The upgrader answered “There is no development version of an LTS available”. By 3 October Canonical had opened the path, and the same check on a fresh 24.04 server returns:

Checking for a new Ubuntu release
New release '26.04.1 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

So the rule of thumb held, just later than the first point release suggests: 26.04.1 was out by early September, and the 24.04 path opened some weeks after it. That gap matters for planning. If your reason for picking 24.04 is “I will upgrade it to 26.04 later”, that upgrade is on offer now, but run do-release-upgrade -c on your own server before you plan around it rather than assuming the timing, and take a snapshot before you start. The mechanics are in our guide to upgrading Ubuntu to a new release.

Server or Desktop Image #

A thousand people a month search for the difference, so it is worth being blunt about it. Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop are the same Ubuntu with different default package sets. Server ships no graphical environment, installs through a text-mode installer rather than a graphical one, and is built around services rather than a logged-in user at a screen. Canonical’s own description is that Desktop is tailored for personal use with a visual interface while Server is optimised for network-scale services and typically operates via text.

For anything you will administer over SSH, take Server. You are not losing capability, and you are not gaining much by installing a desktop you will never see: the graphical stack costs RAM and disk, and on a small cloud instance both are the constraint. A stock 26.04 server image we measured occupies 2.2 GB of a 24 GB disk and runs in under 1 GB of RAM with room to spare.

Where the ISO Actually Is, and How to Verify It #

Canonical publishes every supported release at releases.ubuntu.com, one directory per version. The current server image is ubuntu-26.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso. The amd64 in the name means 64-bit x86; if the machine you are installing on is ARM-based, you need ubuntu-26.04.1-live-server-arm64.iso instead, which Canonical publishes on its cdimage server rather than on releases.ubuntu.com.

The full path is https://releases.ubuntu.com/26.04/ubuntu-26.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso. Swap the version and the filename for 24.04 or 22.04 and the same structure holds. Note the word live-server in the filename: that is the one you want. A file with desktop in the name is the graphical image from the previous section.

Alongside the ISO, every Ubuntu mirror publishes two files that most people skip: SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.gpg. The first is the list of expected checksums, the second is Canonical’s signature over that list. Downloading them at the same time as the ISO costs a couple of seconds and turns “the file probably arrived intact” into something you have actually checked. Put all three in the same directory and run:

sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS

The --ignore-missing flag is there because SHA256SUMS lists every image for the release and you only downloaded one, so it skips the files you do not have instead of reporting each as missing. Look for the line that names your ISO. : OK means the download matches the checksum list byte for byte; the signature check below is what proves the list itself came from Canonical. : FAILED, followed by a warning that a computed checksum did NOT match, means it is not: delete the file and download it again.

That check proves the file matches the checksum list. Verifying the signature on the list itself is the step that proves the list came from Canonical, and it needs Canonical’s public keys in your keyring first. On a machine that has never done this, import them from the Ubuntu keyserver:

gpg --keyid-format long --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 0x46181433FBB75451 0xD94AA3F0EFE21092

Skip that and the next command fails with a “public key not found” error, which looks alarming and means nothing worse than an empty keyring.

Importing a key by its ID proves nothing on its own. Anyone able to serve you a tampered ISO and a matching SHA256SUMS could serve you a key that signs both, and every check below would still pass. The step that closes that loop is comparing the fingerprints you just imported against the ones Canonical publishes:

gpg --keyid-format long --list-keys --with-fingerprint 0x46181433FBB75451 0xD94AA3F0EFE21092

Canonical lists both on its own verification tutorial, and they must match character for character:

• C598 6B4F 1257 FFA8 6632 CBA7 4618 1433 FBB7 5451, Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key
• 8439 38DF 228D 22F7 B374 2BC0 D94A A3F0 EFE2 1092, Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key (2012)

If either fingerprint differs, stop. Do not run the verification below and do not install the image. This is also why the commands here use --keyid-format long: short 32-bit key IDs can be collided and should not be used to identify a key.

With the keys imported and their fingerprints checked, verify the signature:

gpg --keyid-format long --verify SHA256SUMS.gpg SHA256SUMS

A “Good signature” line naming one of the two keys whose fingerprints you just checked is what you are looking for. A warning that the key is not certified with a trusted signature is normal and does not mean the check failed; it means you have not personally vouched for Canonical’s key.

On a Cloud Server There Is Nothing to Download #

If the server is going on a cloud provider, everything above about ISOs is background reading. You pick the operating system from a menu when you create the machine, and the provider boots a prepared image. There is no installer, no checksum, and no USB stick.

That also quietly answers the version question, because the catalogue is short. We read both providers’ public image APIs on 7 September 2026. DigitalOcean offers Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 and 26.04, each available in all 18 of its regions, alongside Debian 13, Rocky and AlmaLinux 8, 9 and 10, and Fedora 43 and 44. Vultr offers the same three Ubuntu LTS releases plus Debian 12 and 13, Rocky and AlmaLinux 9 and 10, CentOS Stream 9 and 10, and Fedora 43 and 44. Neither of them lists an interim Ubuntu release at all. The choice you were agonising over is three items long, and it is the three in the support table above.

If you are ready to launch a server now, our guide on creating your first DigitalOcean Droplet covers the setup process.

What those images actually contain is worth a look, because “Ubuntu 26.04” on a menu is not quite the same object as the ISO. We created one server from each of the three DigitalOcean images and asked:

Three things in that table are worth pulling out. All three images are at their latest point releases, so you are not starting from the original 2022, 2024 or 2026 media. DigitalOcean also rebuilds its images under the same menu name: in the four weeks between our two measurements every kernel moved, and the 24.04 and 26.04 images moved to new point releases (on 7 September the 26.04 image reported plain “Ubuntu 26.04 LTS”, with no point release at all). So check /etc/os-release on the server you actually have rather than trusting the menu. And the kernels are a generation apart, 5.15 through 6.8 to 7.0, which is the single biggest practical difference between the three if your workload cares about hardware or container features.

All three arrived with cloud-init 26.1 installed, unattended security upgrades already enabled, and no Ubuntu Pro subscription attached. That last point matters for the 22.04 case: the free Pro coverage that extends its life to 2032 is something you attach yourself, not something the provider has done for you.

Managed WordPress platforms are a third category and worth naming so you do not go looking for a setting that is not there. On a managed host such as Cloudways you are not choosing a Linux release at all: the platform standardises on its own base operating system and exposes PHP, database and cache settings instead. That is the trade, and it is a reasonable one if you never wanted to pick a kernel. It just means this article’s question does not apply to you.

After the Install #

A fresh Ubuntu Server, whether it came from an ISO or a provider menu, is not finished. It needs a non-root user, key-based SSH, a firewall and the automatic-update behaviour checked rather than assumed. That sequence is the same on every release and we keep a walkthrough per version: Ubuntu 26.04 initial server setup if you took the current LTS, or the 24.04 edition if you matched an existing fleet.