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LibreOffice 26.8 Open-Source Office Suite Officially Released, This Is What’s New
Highlights of LibreOffice 26.8 include the Paragraph Composer in Writer as a text layout algorithm that balances word spacing across consecutive lines, along with support for OpenType font variations and the ability to detect paragraph direction automatically when documents or plain text are opened or pasted.
Also in LibreOffice Writer, new documents now default to start alignment rather than left, changing paragraph direction no longer mirrors explicitly left- or right-aligned paragraphs, baseline grid alignment now works correctly for text inside frames, and the grid itself can be displayed while editing, with a configurable color.
Update (by Roy)
Italo sent us "ANNOUNCEMENT [of] LibreOffice 26.8".
It's a press release:
LibreOffice 26.8 delivers professional typography, broader language support, and no artificial intelligence
Berlin, 26 August 2026 – The Document Foundation today announced LibreOffice 26.8, the new major release of the free and open source office suite, available immediately for Windows, macOS and Linux in over 120 languages. The release is the work of 206 contributors, of whom 155 are volunteers.
The largest body of work in LibreOffice 26.8 addresses the world's writing systems. Writer now detects paragraph direction automatically, wraps bidirectional lines correctly, and handles object resizing in right-to-left and vertical CJK documents. Calc sets cell direction automatically when right-to-left text is entered. Math has gained operators for the N'Ko and Adlam scripts, used for the Manding languages of West Africa and for Fulani. None of this work has a commercial market. It was done anyway, because a foundation does not have to ask whether a language pays for itself before deciding to support it.
Writer introduces the Paragraph Composer, a layout algorithm that balances word spacing across an entire paragraph instead of optimising each line in isolation, eliminating the alternation between crowded and sparse lines that has characterised justified text in word processors since the technology existed. OpenType font variations are now supported natively.
For document exchange, LibreOffice Chart preserves the newer chart types that Microsoft Office writes into OOXML files – box-and-whisker, funnel, Pareto, sunburst, treemap and waterfall – through a full round trip, even though it cannot yet render or edit them. Calc adds Calculated Fields to pivot tables and improves XLSX handling.
LibreOffice 26.8 contains no generative AI features. Documents are never transmitted to remote services, and no component requires network access to function. The suite includes no advertising, no telemetry, no subscription and no account requirement. It does, from this release, display a donation banner in the Start Centre, linking to the donation page and appearing nowhere else in the software: LibreOffice is free to use, but not free to maintain.
Users in production environments may prefer LibreOffice 26.2.5; LibreOffice 26.2.6 follows on 3 September 2026.
Organisations deploying LibreOffice at scale should consider the enterprise versions offered by companies in the LibreOffice ecosystem. These are optimised for managed environments and are backed by Service Level Agreements, professional support and security updates maintained for three to five years, a considerably longer horizon than the community release cycle provides. Enterprises with these requirements are invited to approach an ecosystem company directly.
LibreOffice 26.8 is available from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
Release notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/26.8.
Donations: http://www.libreoffice.org/donate
Blog: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/08/26/libreoffice-26-8/
LibreOffice 26.8 Press Kit
LibreOffice 26.8 Announcement Press Kit (ZIP) with the press release, the blog post, the digital sovereignty backgrounder and the reviewer's guide in both ODT and DOCX, a PDF slide deck with charts about development, downloads and donations, plus a folder with several images, can be downloaded from this link: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/rrQtHx43imejxR5
OMG Ubuntu:
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LibreOffice 26.8 released with paragraph layout changes, draft view + more - OMG! Ubuntu
Among the changes is a new Paragraph Composer. This improves the way Writer handles justified text. In many word processors, justified text is stretched to create straight edge on both sides of the page, but this can look uneven. Some lines packed tight, others gappy.
But with LibreOffice 26.8’s new Paragraph Composer, spacing gets balanced several lines at once, rather than one at a time, which can result in a better overall look: [...]
UbuntuHandbook:
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LibreOffice 26.8 Released with OpenType Font Variations & Improved RTL
LibreOffice, the popular office suite that’s default in many Linux Distributions, released new major 26.8 version on Wednesday.
The new version of this free open-source software features RTL (right-to-left) and bidirectional text support, improved Microsoft Office compatibility, stronger scripting, and various improvements.
LWN:
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LibreOffice 26.8 released
Version 26.8 of the LibreOffice suite has been released.
LibreOffice 26.8 concentrates on three areas: the typographic quality of what the suite produces, the range of writing systems it handles correctly, and the fidelity with which documents survive exchange with other office suites.
The largest single body of work in this release addresses bidirectional and complex text. Writer now detects paragraph direction automatically when documents or plain text are opened or pasted. Line wrapping places end-of-line spaces according to the direction of the paragraph rather than that of the adjacent characters. Object resize handles behave correctly in right-to-left and vertical CJK documents. Bidirectional control characters are now visible alongside other formatting marks. In Calc, typing right-to-left text into an empty cell sets the direction of that cell automatically.
See the release notes
It's FOSS:
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LibreOffice 26.8 Doubles Down on No AI, Right After Collabora Welcomed It
TDF and Collabora have been at odds since April, when TDF's Membership Committee kicked out every Collabora staffer and partner in one move, with more than 30 people dropped.
That didn't stop Collabora from shipping a range of new releases, with Collabora Office 26.04 being the most recent one, where AI was introduced as an opt-in feature, letting users pick a model and bring their own credentials.
Now, LibreOffice, and by extension, The Document Foundation, has put its rejection of AI at the very forefront with the LibreOffice 26.8 release, going as far as calling it out in the release announcement title itself.
FOSSForce:
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LibreOffice 26.8 Again Proves Open Source Is About More Than Code
LibreOffice’s latest release offers a good example of the benefits of supporting community-focused open source projects rather than profit-centered projects whether open source or not. Remove the profit motive, and suddenly serving all of your users becomes a bigger mandate than serving users with pocketbooks.
As expected, LibreOffice 26.8, which hit the streets on Wednesday, delivers new features in spades. Interestingly, few of them are of the meaningless bells and whistles variety that proprietary vendors such as Microsoft like to add to maximize cash sales. Here, the additions focused on things like interoperability and languages that are underserved by mainstream software.
Another One From OMG Ubuntu:
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LibreOffice 26.8 sets a new first-week download record
Released on 26 August, LibreOffice 26.8 saw 1,031,162 downloads from the official website, which provides installers for Windows, macOS and Linux, during the first seven days.
As many Linux users update via other sources, like the Snap Store, Flathub and PPAs, the real figure will be even higher than that.
“This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release”, The Document Foundation said in a blog post to recap the impact the new version has had (it also gained traction on social media too).
What’s made this release such a hit?
# of downloads:
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One week of LibreOffice 26.8 – The stats!
One week ago, we announced LibreOffice 26.8, our brand new major update. It’s full of new features, and has many improvements to compatibility and performance too.