Open edX Ulmo Release (January 2026)

Open edX Ulmo Release (January 2026)#

Welcome to the Ulmo release! Discover new and exciting features built for authors, learners, and site operators. Here’s what’s ready for you now:

🧑‍🏫 For Course Authors#

Build Complete Course Structures in Libraries: Build entire course sections once, then reuse them across courses, with improved sync workflows that visually show changes before you apply them - plus a migration tool to move Legacy Library content forward.

Granular Roles and Permissions for Libraries: Assign Library Admin, Author, Contributor, or User roles with specific permissions for viewing, editing, publishing, and managing content from a central Administrative Console that shows your entire team at a glance.

Reusable LTI Configurations: Set up LTI tool credentials once in a central store, then reuse them across all courses and blocks, eliminating repetitive data entry and reducing configuration errors across your entire instance.

LTI Certified ✅: The Open edX Ulmo Release has achieved the LTI Advantage Complete certification!

Smaller changes include a new problem visibility option and new tools to limit spam in discussion forums.

🎓 For Learners#

Beautiful Course Pages: Your course catalog is getting a major glow-up! New, customizable pages help you showcase courses with modern design and full theming support.

Smart Notifications: Never let students miss important discussions again! Keep learners engaged with timely alerts about new posts and announcements, delivered both in-platform and via email.

Enhanced mobile experience: Learners get a new Course Home carousel showing progress, videos, assignments, and grades at a glance. Also included is a redesigned Content tab with filtered views and a dedicated Progress page to track achievement.

⚙️ For Site Operators#

Important: The Ulmo release will require the new theming system.

More Flexibility To Build Custom Features: More plugin slots have been added across the platform to support easier customization and extension by your development or operations team.

🔮 Upcoming in Verawood (June 2026)#

We’re working hard on even more improvements in our Verawood release (out now)! You can look forward to:

Roles and Permissions Improvements in Studio: A more granular, nuanced way of granting privileges to course staff and instructors.

Instructor Dashboad Overhaul: A beautiful, themeable Instructor Dashboard with numerous usability improvements is coming your way.

Reliable, Repeatable LTI Units: Configuration integrity when duplicating LTI blocks and improved compatibility with Content Libraries, enabling reliable block-level reusability and reducing the need for repeated configuration across courses.

AI Extension Framework: By leveraging existing backend and frontend plugins, the Open edX platform will support adding diverse AI tools to the platform (both LMS and Studio) as extensions.

⌚ Ready to Upgrade?#

Have your site operations team check out the Tutor upgrading guide so they can upgrade your Open edX instance to the Ulmo release!