Finally … Oracle AI Database 26ai is going to be available on non-Oracle hardware

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Oracle AI Database 26ai 65

Many of you have read my blog post from October during Oracle AI World in Las Vegas about Oracle AI Database 26ai replacing Oracle Database 23ai. But the main question remained: When is it available on-prem on non-Oracle hardware? It’s December now, and Christmas is coming soon, it is time for presents. Yes, finally … Oracle AI Database 26ai is going to be available on non-Oracle hardware.

Finally ... Oracle AI Database 26ai is going to be available on non-Oracle hardware

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

When is it going to be released?

You still need to wait a few weeks, potentially until the 2nd half of January 2026. The CPU date is January 20, 2026. Therefore, this may be a potential date. But actually it is best to not speculate but rather have a quick look into MOS 742060.1 – Release Schedule of Current Database Releases in mid-January for a more exact date. As this is our “Single Source of Truth” note, it has been updated by the time you are reading this blog post with the official on-prem release announcement. But the exact release date will be updated later.

 

What is going to be released?

The long-awaited on-prem release of Oracle AI Database 26ai formerly known as Oracle Database 23ai – on Linux at first.

This means you will download the gold image containing Oracle AI Database 26ai – 23.26.1.0.0 Enterprise Edition – the first-quarter Release Update. From my previous blog post Oracle AI Database 26ai replacing Oracle Database 23ai you will see that – in case you are on Oracle Database 19c or 21c, you can upgrade directly to it with AutoUpgrade. And in case you are on Oracle Database 23ai already, you just update (aka: patch) to 23.26.1.0..

In both cases, AutoUpgrade does the job for you including downloading the software, and building your new home. It will determine automatically whether an upgrade or just an update are going to happen. Keep in mind that AutoUpgrade is the only-supported way to upgrade to Oracle AI Database 26ai.

The good news is that you won’t need to re-certify applications when you were on 23ai already.

 

When will it be released on other platforms?

Please have a look at MOS 742060.1 – Release Schedule of Current Database Releases for other platforms. You will find updates for Oracle on Windows and AIX in the table listing the release announcements set to CY26, meaning calendar year 2026. Other platform announcements and more precise dates may follow soon.

 

Will the Lifetime Support Policy stay the same?

Since Oracle AI Database 26ai replaced Oracle Database 23ai it inherited the support time frame and agreement. Premier Support for Oracle AI Database 26ai will end on Dec 31, 2031. And Extended Support periods will be determined and published once the release is general available for download.

The Support end dates for Oracle Database 19c remain the same as they’d been updated and published a bit over a year ago.

 

Want to learn more? Anything else?

Well, trust me, I am super-happy and excited. Now it is time for ISV, software vendors and also our customers with mixed hardware setups or just non-Oracle hardware to enter the game and explore all the cool features. Of course, Exadata remains the platform of choice, whether on-prem, as Cloud@Customer or as Exadata Cloud Services or as platform for Oracle AI Autonomous Database.

It is time to fasten your seat belt – and as a starter, you will sign up to our Virtual Classroom Seminar for next week right now:

Best Practices for Upgrading to Oracle AI Database 26ai on Thursday, Dec 11, 2025 – 14:00h CET

This will give you the right information to get kick-started after the quiet period of the year. And we will share the right config files for you to download, install and upgrade your databases to Oracle AI Database 26ai with zero effort.

We are looking forward to talk to you next week!!

 

Further Links and Information

–Mike

Tags:

You may also like...

65 Responses

  1. Alan Sterger says:
    December 3, 2025 at 17:39

    Will the 26AI Linux release restrict Tablespace/Datafile size? In other words, will this be the long awaited on-premise version?

    Reply
  2. Roland says:
    December 3, 2025 at 17:51

    Hi Mike,
    only enterprise or also se2?

    Reply
  3. Arne Ortlinghaus says:
    December 3, 2025 at 17:56

    Wow, did you want to give us an early Christmas present? Thanks for the Info.

    Reply
  4. Ben says:
    December 3, 2025 at 20:02

    We’ll believe it when we have the download link. Fool me once….

    Reply
    • Mike.Dietrich says:
      December 9, 2025 at 12:45

      Hahahaha …
      I see where you are coming from – but no worries, we would not announce it if it wouldn’t be true.

      Cheers,
      Mike

      Reply
      • Brian says:
        December 18, 2025 at 16:53

        “we would not announce it if it wouldn’t be true.”

        Sadly I have to remind the viewers that it was announced to be released in 1H24. Then 2H24. Then CY25 which very quickly turned to TBD. So I’m like Ben. We’ll believe it when we have the download link.

        Reply
  5. Brian Fitzgerald says:
    December 3, 2025 at 20:55

    Right now, we noticed two issues with AWS RDS Oracle EE CDB:

    1. There is no control over AWR snapshot retention.
    2. “Log Miner is not supported in Oracle PDB environment”, says Attunity.

    These issues are headwinds to CDB adoption, and therefore, 26ai, in AWS RDS.

    Reply
  6. Roland says:
    December 3, 2025 at 22:14

    Hi Mike, and another dumb questions from me: will there be a gold image every quarter and will the gold image include only the RU or also the datapump bundle patch? or anything else?
    and will there be also gold images for grid (restart)?

    Regards
    Roland

    Reply
    • Mike.Dietrich says:
      December 9, 2025 at 12:44

      Hi Roland,

      this is not a dumb question at all.

      Yes, there will be a new gold image every quarter, and No, it won’t include the DPBP since it is not yet RAC rolling.
      BUT … I have an awesome relief, and please tune in to our coming Virtual Classroom Seminar in February 2026 where we will showcase how you can use AutoUpgrade to have it build YOUR personal gold image with everything you want 🙂

      Coming with the AU version available in Jan 26 – right on time for the release of 26 ai on-prem on Linux.

      Cheers,
      Mike

      Reply
  7. Eric says:
    December 4, 2025 at 01:45

    hi Mike,
    What I’m curious about is which Linux version the new 23.26.1 will be certified for. Does it include oel/rhel 10.x?

    Reply
  8. asaram says:
    December 4, 2025 at 07:10

    Virtual Classroom Seminar

    Reply
  9. Ulrich Weber says:
    December 4, 2025 at 07:41

    Good news. Are there any news, when will it be possible to run 26ai on Oracle Linux 10 as well?
    In particular, I would like to use 26ai free on a Linux 10 machine.

    Reply
  10. anael says:
    December 4, 2025 at 08:15

    Good news and thanks for the info about the webinar, it will be time to upgrade our ansible playbooks.

    Reply
  11. Eric says:
    December 8, 2025 at 06:25

    hi Mike,
    from docs, 26ai only certified on Linux 9.x and 8.x platform, it’s expected for a long time since early of this year that 10.x GA.

    Reply
  12. Cesar Delgado says:
    December 15, 2025 at 20:21

    What about IBM AIX ???

    Reply
  13. Caglar Yalcin says:
    December 17, 2025 at 18:00

    Hi Mike, thanks for the good news, unfortunately I missed the virtual classroom seminar, is there already an upgrade guide for 26ai available? Looking forward to see you at the Christkindlesmarkt 😉

    Reply
  14. Roland says:
    January 7, 2026 at 08:52

    Hi Mike,
    the document at https://support.oracle.com/support/?documentId=PNEWS1360 makes no difference between SE2 and EE (i cannot find any reference) and the EE Installer always was able to install SE2 (also the latest beta build). Are you sure, SE2 is not published with EE?

    If SE2 is not yet published, i guess, the question is only when?

    Regards,
    Roland

    Reply
    • Mike.Dietrich says:
      January 7, 2026 at 16:36

      Hi Roland,

      I see that, and you are fully right. I was under the impression that it will be mentioned in https://support.oracle.com/support/?documentId=PNEWS1360 – but it doesn’t make a distinction between EE and SE2. So, my guess is that there will be a clarification once it is released. Since the announcement says “Enterprise Edition” I’m just guessing that you can’t link SE2 then.

      And unfortunately, I have no dates to share.

      Thanks,
      Mike

      Reply
  15. Ram says:
    January 9, 2026 at 16:35

    Hi Mike
    Would I be totally off if I were to assume this will be released along with Quarterly CPU Patches on 1/20/26?
    Not, not asking you to stick your neck out for this – just wondering 🙂 Thanks.

    Reply
  16. DennisD says:
    January 14, 2026 at 16:27

    Hi Mike,
    Oracle’s direction is clear: they only want customers with deep pockets. Small and medium-sized businesses are irrelevant. See high-availability solutions, etc.
    In my opinion, the community, including DOAG, can’t do anything about it.
    “Cloud first” is the next topic. European companies that aren’t blind don’t want the cloud.
    The same thing is happening now with the SE2 version: It’s being treated like a stepchild.
    At some point, Oracle will pay the price for this. I’m already noticing it: All of our customers want to move away from Oracle and switch to MSSQL, Postgres, etc.

    Very sad…

    Reply
    • Mike.Dietrich says:
      January 26, 2026 at 14:40

      Hi DennisD,

      I hear you – and actually, this is not fully correct. We offer Autonomous AI Database at a very comparable price model. I am not in license but actually this is what customer tell me for smaller databases. But of course, I know what you mean. Unfortunately, I have not much influence on it – and we both have to wait for what’s coming.

      Thanks,
      Mike

      Reply
  17. Werner Sanojca says:
    January 20, 2026 at 11:50

    Oracle AI Database 26ai Enterprise Edition is announced to be published OnPrem.
    Is it planned to publish Oracle AI Database 26ai Standard Edition 2 or is Oracle Database Standard Edition a discontinued model?

    Reply
  18. Paul says:
    January 21, 2026 at 18:27

    Hi Mike, thanks for sharing the good news. Is it released already? The post said “CPU date is January 20, 2026” but I cannot find the binary download link anywhere.

    Reply
  19. Ralf Laichinger says:
    January 22, 2026 at 10:40

    Release 23.26.1.0 ist released and ther is a golden image, but….

    Applicable to 26ai Cloud Services, Exadata and ODA Engineered Systems only.

    CPU Jan26 is not released for non Oracle Hardware, but there are still 9 days left to change availability or change the release Document to TBA again. Lets see if its the last Chapter or another Chapter in a never ending story.
    Really sad.

    Reply
  20. Andreas says:
    January 22, 2026 at 13:52

    Hi Mike,
    Did Oracle change the mind regarding 26ai for on-prem? 🙂
    Both KB106822 and at least the readme for 38743961 (23.26.1 Database gold image) mention applicability just for Cloud Services, Exadata, Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) Engineered Systems, Private Cloud Appliance (PCA), and Compute Cloud@Customer (C3) only.

    Reply
    • Mike.Dietrich says:
      January 26, 2026 at 14:36

      Hi Andreas,

      no – I just assume (but haven’t checked) that there is a mistake in the README. And the official announcement should be this week 🙂

      Cheers,
      Mike

      Reply
  21. Christian Floreck says:
    January 23, 2026 at 14:38

    Hi Mike
    That’s realy great news!
    I MUST get my fingers on it.
    However, one question.
    What about Grid Infrastructure?
    In edelivery I only find a Version for engeniereed systems. 🙁
    I hope a version for on‑premises will be ready to download soon?
    Thanks and greetings from Berlin

    Reply
  22. Christian Floreck says:
    January 26, 2026 at 18:15

    Hi Mike
    Thanks for the link – it’s helpfull as we are looking forward to upgrade to 26ai.
    I’ll follow these steps .
    And wait for GI
    Cheers
    Christian

    Reply
  23. Dimitri Gielis says:
    January 27, 2026 at 18:28

    Released today 🙂

    Reply
  24. Devin Conner says:
    January 27, 2026 at 18:45

    Just saw that 26ai EE for on-prem (non-Oracle hardware) is on the download site. Finally!

    Reply
  25. Alex says:
    January 28, 2026 at 08:19

    I’ve found a hint at https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/oracle-database-software-downloads.html that EE Download also “Includes Standard Edition 2”. So is 26ai SE2 also released for on-prem installations?

    Reply
  26. Anuj Singh says:
    January 29, 2026 at 11:23

    Finally ….. please check below for installation of Oracle 26ai
    https://anuj-singh.blogspot.com/2026/?m=0

    Reply
  27. Stephen Thomas says:
    July 28, 2026 at 12:26

    Oracle 26ai Standard Edition 2 is finally out – as of RU3 (23.26.3.0.0)

    Reply
    • Mike.Dietrich says:
      July 28, 2026 at 13:04

      Really???
      You mean, you can install SE2 as Gold Image from the 23.26.3 download?

      Thanks
      Mike

      Reply
      • Stephen Thomas says:
        July 28, 2026 at 13:21

        Absolutely – its so exciting (well that’s a bit sad), but we have been waiting for a while – right at the bottom of the queue (on premises and SE2). It installs fine. Not sure we have installed the grid infrastructure yet, but I have been checking each release (update) to see when SE2 was going to be one of the options available in inventory/response/db_install.rsp file

        Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mike Dietrich
Oracle Vice President of Product Management and Development for Database Upgrade, Cloud Migrations and Patching writing just another blog.

Opinions certainly are my own as is this page.

Archives

Categories

Upgrade @YouTube

Subscribe via Email

Join 11.1K other subscribers