Learn what’s new in the LibreOffice 26.8 release across Writer, Calc, Impress and the rest of the suite.
LibreOffice 26.8 was released on 26 August 2026 for Windows, macOS and Linux. The updates are heavier on Writer than on Base or Draw, which is the usual pattern. The useful work is in how text is set, right-to-left editing, and a handful of Calc and Impress items people have been asking for.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the new features of LibreOffice 26.8.
Table of Contents
LibreOffice 26.8: New Features
Writer
The feature worth trying first is the Paragraph Composer. Word processors still justify one line at a time. A long word near a break packs one line and leaves the next one full of gaps. The new composer balances word spacing across consecutive lines, and you can cap how wide that spacing is allowed to get. The release notes show the same paragraph at 133% and 250% maximum word spacing. Justified text finally has a knob.
Draft view is the other everyday change. View > Draft hides the page furniture so you can edit without headers, footers and margins in the way. Switch back to Normal view when you care about the page again. Large Writer files with a lot of images also open faster.
Page line-spacing now works inside frames. Text in a frame lines up with the baseline grid instead of drifting off it. You can show that grid from View > Grids and Helplines > Display Baseline Grid. The colour is under Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Appearance > Customizations > Baseline grid.
Right-to-left editing gets a proper pass:
- Paragraph direction is detected when you open a file or paste plain text.
- Spaces at the end of a line follow the paragraph direction, not the reading direction of the characters next to them.
- Resize handles behave correctly in RTL and vertical CJK documents.
- Formatting marks now include the bidirectional control characters, so those invisible switches can be seen and edited.
- New documents default to start alignment, not left. Changing direction no longer flips a paragraph you explicitly set to left or right. For direction-based alignment, use start or end.
A few smaller Writer items are worth knowing:
- Field names for document statistics now include the subtype. “Statistics” reads as “Statistics: Pages”, for example.
- The Word Count dialog shows counts before and after the cursor.
- Page style names appear in the page-break decoration.
- Navigator lists index entries. Headings can be sorted with their contents from the Navigator, but that one needs experimental features turned on.
- Sections can be sorted alphabetically by heading.
- Mail Merge keeps its output options (single document or individual files, and the file format) between runs.
- Quick Find in the sidebar searches comments, and its options live in the deck instead of a separate dialog.
Alt+PgDnandAlt+PgUpput the top of the page at the top of the window. Go to Page does the same.- An option under
Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer > Formatting Aidscontrols whether typing replaces the selection. - An infobar appears if automatic formatting strips leading or trailing spaces or tabs.
- DOCX style import keeps the “hidden” and “show in gallery” flags, so the style list can be filtered to the useful ones.
- There is plumbing for comparing two documents side by side. It is groundwork, not a finished compare view.
Calc
Pivot tables get Calculated Fields. You can add a field from a formula on data already in the table, instead of preparing that column in the source sheet.
Shuffle randomises the order of cells in a range. Fine for sample data. Easy to hit if you are not looking.
Other Calc changes:
- Data validity can silently reject invalid entries again. That was the behaviour before 24.2, and it is restored.
- Typing right-to-left text into an empty cell sets that cell to RTL. Editing RTL sheets is less awkward in general.
- Cell styles support relative font sizes.
- The border toolbar control is now a split button. It remembers the last border style and can reapply it.
Ctrl+Homemoves to the first non-frozen cell, not into the frozen pane.- Line breaks in referenced cells survive XLSX round-trips better.
- Form controls in XLSX files show up in the Navigator.
- A link that points at a hidden sheet now raises a notification.
- Header and footer text formatting in the dialog is easier to change.
- The Calculate options page has been reorganised.
Impress
A document can mix page sizes. You are no longer locked to one dimension for every slide. There is a resize-all-pages path when you do want them matched.
Presentation sections group slides under names. They are available from the context menu in the slide pane. Custom slide names show next to the slide number above each thumbnail. In Outline view, the selected slide follows the cursor.
Numbered lists can be turned into bulleted lists.
Some bundled templates now offer both 16:9 and 4:3: Blueprint Plans, Beehive, DNA, Lights and Nature Illustration. 16:9 is the default. Switching ratio no longer stretches the background art. Slideshow navigation icons also scale with the window.
Draw
Draw can swap the mouse wheel. When the option is on, the wheel zooms and Ctrl plus the wheel scrolls. The old behaviour was the other way around.
Math
Math gains named functions and operators for N’Ko and Adlam, plus left-pointing vector arrows and harpoons for right-to-left formulas. There is also a matrix creator dialog, which is the practical addition if you build formulas by hand.
Chart
Chart can import and re-export newer OOXML “chartex” types: box-and-whisker, funnel, Pareto, sunburst, treemap and waterfall. LibreOffice still cannot draw or edit them. It shows a message naming the unsupported type and keeps the definition, so a file saved here goes back to Excel intact. Region map charts are the weak case. The type survives, and most of the geographic data does not.
Base
SQL comments are kept when you switch a query to Design View. Do not edit the query in that view if you care about the comments. The visual editor regenerates the SQL and drops them. With the embedded Firebird database, date, time and timestamp columns can be filtered.
User interface and common updates
OpenType font variations are supported natively. A variable font can use its axes from one file instead of a pile of static cuts. Font names stored in a language other than your interface language also resolve, so a document written elsewhere keeps the typeface its author chose, if that font is installed.
The Notebookbar background is tinted per module, so Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw are easier to tell apart. The colours are hard-coded for now and blended with the theme. Expert config NotebookbarColorTransparency controls the mix (0 is the module colour, 255 is the plain background, default 150). Tabs have category labels and can be scrolled with the mouse wheel or a touchpad. Theme colour changes no longer need a restart. In Impress, theme colours are reachable from the Notebookbar.
The style list is the same in the Notebookbar, the Formatting toolbar and the sidebar, and entries preview the style. Using a custom style no longer hides a standard one. In the style dialog, the Organizer tab shows a chip for each property that differs from the parent, with an X to reset that property. Sidebar style filters can be combined.
Other shared changes:
- Keyboard shortcuts can be saved to one document.
- Paper sizes from A0 to B3 are in the page style dialog and the sidebar.
- Existing table styles in Writer and Calc can be edited. The internal format moved from binary to XML.
- The Hyperlink dialog can strip the query string from an address.
- Unicode escapes work in Find and Replace when regular expressions are on.
- Custom dictionaries have a search filter.
- On Windows, resizable dialogs get a maximise button.
- On macOS, Emoji & Symbols, Dictation and AutoFill are in the menus.
- If you are on the generic VCL widgets because a desktop integration package such as
libreoffice-kf6is missing, an infobar says so and how to fix it.
A few labels changed. “Company” in user data is now “Organization”. “Safe Mode” is “Troubleshoot Mode”. “Use square page mode for text grid” is “Use CJK manuscript grid”, which is the genkō yōshi grid. “Do show again” is now “Do not show again”.
Accessibility
The special character split button can be used from the keyboard. Writer tables report row and column index text the way ARIA specifies, so a screen reader can describe the structure instead of a flat list of cells.
Scripting
Python scripts can be created and edited from the Macro manager without the APSO extension. They open in the system text editor. Scripts can also create UNO services with a constructor instead of a string name:
from com.sun.star.awt import Toolkit
toolkit = Toolkit.create(self.xContext)ScriptForge adds ui.EnterValue() for a typed input box (string, password, bool, integer, float, date, time, datetime, combo, list, radio). Basic arrays get Map, Filter and Reduce. A default pipe named PIPE2LIBREOFFICE lets the same Python script run inside LibreOffice or against it as a client, without hard-coding the pipe.
Localization
AutoCorrect in Esperanto text turns x-style digraphs into circumflexes. sxangxigxi becomes ŝanĝiĝi.
Removals
Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic (the old 1.102 build) are no longer bundled. Documents that name them fall back unless you install the fonts. The Document Foundation still hosts that zip, and current Gentium builds are on the SIL site.
Obsolete Java applet settings are gone, and so is the OfficeBean example in the SDK. The AppletShape API is deprecated and due to be removed later.
Download LibreOffice 26.8
Fresh builds are on the official download page.
How to Upgrade?
On Ubuntu, Fedora and other Linux distributions, the update usually lands in the repos a little after the announcement. If you want it now:
Windows still has no in-place upgrade path. Uninstall, then install this version:
macOS:
Additional resources:
Closing Notes
This is a better Writer release than a suite-wide one. Paragraph Composer, Draft view, the baseline grid, and the RTL fixes are the parts you will notice. Calc’s Calculated Fields and the border split button are the practical spreadsheet bits. Chart compatibility is preservation, not new charts you can edit.
Base and Draw are quiet again. The side-by-side compare item in the notes is plumbing. Treat it as unfinished.
Via the 26.8 release notes.
