FreeBSD 14.5-RC1 Now Available

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 30, 2026

The first release candidate build of the 14.5-RELEASE release cycle is now available.


Installation images are available for:


o 14.5-RC1 amd64 GENERIC
o 14.5-RC1 i386 GENERIC
o 14.5-RC1 powerpc GENERIC
o 14.5-RC1 powerpc64 GENERIC64
o 14.5-RC1 powerpc64le GENERIC64LE
o 14.5-RC1 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE
o 14.5-RC1 armv7 GENERICSD
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 GENERIC
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 RPI
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 PINE64
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 PINEBOOK
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 ROCK64
o 14.5-RC1 aarch64 ROCKPRO64
o 14.5-RC1 riscv64 GENERIC
o 14.5-RC1 riscv64 GENERICSD


Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
system.


Installer images and memory stick images are available here:


    https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.5/


The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.


If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
system or on the -stable mailing list.


If you would like to use Git to do a source based update of an existing
system, use the "releng/14.5" branch.


A summary of changes since BETA3 includes:


o FreeBSD-SA-26:{56, 58, 61, 62, 63} security advisories


o The FreeBSD-kmods repository not points to packages built on FreeBSD 14.5.


A list of changes since 14.4 is available in the releng/14.5
release notes:


    https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.5R/relnotes/


Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
updated on an ongoing basis as the 14.5-RELEASE cycle progresses.

Read on