LibreOffice 26.8 is out – local first, and with no AI

The latest semi-annual release of LibreOffice, the cross-platform FOSS office suite, is out – and it’s gleefully throwing some shade.

The Document Foundation released LibreOffice 26.8 – and sent The Register a press pack before it did so.

We’re not going to go through it in great depth: it’s a mature suite, and most Linux distros bundle it by default, even some of the slightly strange ones.

We do like some of the sly notes in the launch materials, though, starting with the headline: “LibreOffice 26.8 brings professional typography, deeper support for the world’s writing systems, and no artificial intelligence” No artificial intelligence.

In 2026, this is a bold position statement, but it is merited.

In the last six months, we have reported on The Document Foundation distancing itself from Collabora.

We spoke to some representatives of TDF – and Collabora – at considerable length about this, but we came away unconvinced by TDF’s arguments.

Collabora developers contribute much of the code in LibreOffice.

For instance, the last time we covered a new release of LibreOffice, we mentioned its rich Markdown support.

Collabora told us that its engineers developed this.

And yet, TDF decided to restart development of its own cloud-based office suite, in direct competition with Collabora Office.

Later we covered the release of Collabora CODE 26.04 – which is Collabora’s local office suite, based on LibreOffice FOSS code, but rendered inside the browser using web technologies.

Collabora’s announcement places AI integration front and centre.

That caused us some dismay, and we told the company’s representatives that.