KDE Plasma 6.8 Desktop Environment to Drop the X11 Session and Go Wayland-Only

posted by Marius Nestor on Nov 26, 2025,
updated Nov 29, 2025

After GNOME and Budgie developers announced that they would go Wayland-only for future releases, it’s time for the KDE Plasma developers to do the same, stating that it will open the door to new opportunities for features, optimizations, and speed of development in the longer term.

So, starting with the KDE Plasma 6.8 release, which will be out sometime in October 2026, the Plasma X11 session will be removed, and Xwayland will be used by the Plasma Wayland session to support X11 applications.

Read on

Update (by Roy)

From Plasma Team:

• Going all-in on a Wayland future

  Well folks, it’s the beginning of a new era: after nearly three decades of KDE desktop environments running on X11, the future KDE Plasma 6.8 release will be Wayland-exclusive! Support for X11 applications will be fully entrusted to Xwayland, and the Plasma X11 session will no longer be included.

  For most users, this will have no immediate impact. The vast majority of our users are already using the Wayland session, it’s the default on most distributions, and some of them have already dropped — or are planning to drop — the Plasma X11 session independently of what we decide.

  In the longer term, this change opens up new opportunities for features, optimizations, and speed of development.

GoL:

• KDE Plasma going all-in on Wayland and will drop the X11 session completely | GamingOnLinux

  It was only a matter of time but it's nearly upon us - KDE Plasma with version 6.8 will be entirely dropping the X11 session to go full Wayland.

OMG Ubuntu:

• KDE Plasma is Going Wayland-Only (But Don't Panic Yet) - OMG! Ubuntu

  As with GNOME (who ripped the bandaid off in GNOME 49), this change does not mean X11 applications will no longer work in KDE Plasma 6.8. Legacy software will run, as it already does on Wayland, though the Xwayland compatibility layer.

  But a dedicated Plasma X11 desktop session will not be provided.

  The deprecation is being signposted well in advance. KDE Plasma 6.5 was released in October 2025 and Plasma 6.8 is not due for release until October 2026, and support for Plasma 6.7, the final version with an X11, will continue until 2027.

  So there’s plenty of time to prepare.

Borisov:

• KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Fully Wayland, Ending Nearly 30 Years of X11 Sessions

  Today, in the post on the KDE Blogs titled “Going all-in on a Wayland future“, the devs announced that Plasma is moving fully to Wayland, with Xwayland taking over all legacy application support. KDE notes that most users have already transitioned, as Wayland is the default across many distributions and the Plasma X11 session has been slowly phased out elsewhere.

  But no worries for now. X11 apps will continue to run through Xwayland, which already handles most workloads reliably. KDE has added compatibility features such as improved fractional scaling and optional X11 global shortcut support to smooth the transition.

LWN:

• KDE Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-only

  KDE's Plasma team has announced that KDE Plasma will drop X11 session support with Plasma 6.8:

  The Plasma X11 session will be supported by KDE into early 2027.

  We cannot provide a specific date, as we're exploring the possibility of shipping some extra bug-fix releases for Plasma 6.7. The exact timing of the last one will only be known when we get closer to its actual release, which we expect will be sometime in early 2027.

  What if I still really need X11?

  This is a perfect use case for long term support (LTS) distributions shipping older versions of Plasma. For example, AlmaLinux 9 includes the Plasma X11 session and will be supported until sometime in 2032.

  See the blog post for information on running X11 applications (still supported), accessibility, gaming, and more.

It's FOSS:

• KDE Plasma 6.8 Set to Drop X11 Support Completely

  A growing number of Linux desktop environments (DEs) are moving towards Wayland, the modern display protocol designed to replace the aging X11 window system.

  X11 has been the foundation of Linux graphical interfaces for over three decades now, but it carries significant technical debt and security limitations that Wayland aims to address.

  Projects like Fedora, GNOME, and KDE have been leading the charge on this by being among the first ones to adopt Wayland.

  Now, KDE has announced it is sunsetting the Plasma X11 session entirely.

How-To Geek:

• After 30 years, KDE says goodbye to X11

  KDE is officially announcing that the future Plasma 6.8 desktop environment release will be Wayland-exclusive. The platform will finally drop the decades-old X11 session. This is a massive change. After nearly three decades of running the KDE desktop on the X Server, the Plasma X11 session is gone.

  For most people reading this, you probably won’t even notice. Wayland is already the default desktop session on the vast majority of distributions. Apparently, many distributions were already planning to drop the X11 Plasma session regardless of what the KDE team decided. This move is really about long-term development.

  Cutting the X11 tether opens up huge opportunities for feature development, better optimizations, and a much snappier speed of development moving forward. If you’re worried about when exactly you need to update, the team is still supporting the Plasma X11 session until early 2027.

A couple more:

• KDE Plasma Linux DE Drops X11 Support in 6.8 Release

  KDE Plasma 6.5 recently launched, bringing with it a host of fixes and quality of life updates, along with some visual tweaks to make the desktop experience feel more polished. Now, however, KDE has officially announced that it will officially stop supporting the X11 session as of the release of KDE Plasma 6.8, which is slated to launch sometime in late 2027 or 2028. KDE has confirmed that the X11 session will still be supported until 2027. Anyone who still relies on X11 for legacy app or feature support at that point in time will be required to use XWayland for those apps. KDE says that dropping X11 support will allow the development team to "move faster to improve stability and functionality," without the bloated X11 protocol holding back development.

• KDE Plasma sets date to dump X11 as Wayland push accelerates

  The oldest of the open source Linux desktops is planning its final steps away from X11, while an even older Unix desktop is getting freshened up.

  The team behind the KDE Plasma desktop announced it is going all-in on a Wayland future. The Plasma version 6.8, "which we expect will be sometime in early 2027," will completely drop X11 support.

  You don't need to worry just yet. Plasma 6.5 appeared less than a month ago, and it's currently at version 6.5.3. That means there are the entire 6.6 and 6.7 release sequences to get through, which will probably take most of 2026 and some of 2027.

Later coverage:

• KDE is going Wayland-only in the future

  KDE has announced that it will go Wayland-only in a future release of Plasma Desktop. It will not support X11 sessions from 2027.