Where is Windows 12?

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Microsoft seems happy to stick with Windows 11, for now.

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While I wasn’t expecting Microsoft to announce Windows 12 during its RTX Spark launch event last month, more than a few people were hoping to see something truly new. Between the growing frustration with Windows 11 and the muted response to Copilot Plus PCs, it’s starting to feel like Microsoft needs to go bigger with its desktop OS.

Much of this year’s Windows development has been focused on underlying performance improvements, after Microsoft acknowledged the bloat and reliability issues with Windows 11 and created a plan to fix them. That work is ongoing, and sources tell me there’s now a big focus on quality for the next major release of Windows 11 in 2027.

Microsoft started planning to shift back to a three-year release cycle for Windows in 2022, with the first big release in 2024. At the time, many expected that to be Windows 12, but the company stuck to a major update of Windows 11 instead. Now that the three-year cycle is about to hit again, it looks like Microsoft is promising to improve Windows 11 instead of rolling new features and underlying improvements into a Windows 12 release.

Sources tell me that Microsoft is already preparing for Windows 11 version 27H2. Like the big 24H2 release in 2024, this will be a full OS swap, where Microsoft replaces or upgrades major parts of the OS. The past couple of annual releases (25H2 and 26H2) have been enablement packages, which simply switch new features on gradually as they’re rolled out in monthly cumulative updates.

Since this is a bigger release, more testing will be required for the new features and changes that Microsoft is planning to make next year. We will likely see Windows Insider testing begin a lot sooner than the typical June timeframe Microsoft used for both 25H2 and 26H2.

Microsoft is also preparing for the big release of Windows 11 next year by replacing the default wallpaper of the operating system. Sources tell me a new wallpaper will be unveiled at Microsoft’s Ignite conference later this month, with a series of designs replacing Bloom, the current default. Microsoft used Bloom to market Windows 11 heavily during its launch phase, with “Bloomberry” ice cream and the wallpaper gracing the famous Times Square screens.

The wallpaper replacements will vary across consumer and commercial versions of Windows 11, I’m told. The designs are similar to Bloom, but with a folding sheet of color immersed in clouds. The Windows 11 Pro version looks the most like the Bloom colors, while there are subtle variations for the consumer versions of Windows 11, focused on gaming, productivity, creator, and performance.

Microsoft has quietly started using some of these new wallpapers in its recent Windows 11 marketing materials, and it plans to preview the full Bloom replacement at Ignite before rolling it out broadly in early January.

The question I can’t answer yet is whether Microsoft will even consider moving to Windows 12 branding next year, or whether that’s still a few years away. Microsoft seems to be set on improving Windows 11’s reputation, but it’s a difficult task to achieve when lots of people have already made their minds up.

Even Microsoft’s performance improvements haven’t convinced everyone yet. Microsoft showed off some more of its memory optimization work earlier this week, improving performance and multitasking on PCs with 8GB of RAM. “Windows can now keep up to 2 GB more of your active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, so an app or tab you left open is less likely to reload when you return,” explains Windows chief Pavan Davuluri.

I’ve seen YouTubers and even some Windows Insiders question this work, skeptical that Microsoft is actually making improvements. But it’s not just a false promise from Windows engineers; there’s a big effort to make a series of small improvements that all add up to a better performance across a variety of hardware.

Windows Central tested Microsoft’s claims and found that the latest updates to Windows 11 do, in fact, improve memory usage. Paging less data to disk will also improve performance, particularly when you’re multitasking between apps on a system with just 8GB of RAM. Microsoft is making improvements to memory usage in apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook, too, so this isn’t even just a Windows effort anymore.

These changes are hard to notice unless you compare two systems side by side, and Microsoft clearly has a perception problem with Windows 11 that steady improvements like this won’t overcome.

Microsoft ultimately missed a chance to simply own up to the malware-like ads it has squeezed into Windows 11 and be transparent about the fact that they were a mistake. Instead, I think the company is betting that it can win back users over the long term through genuine improvements rather than a marketing exercise that packages everything up into a shiny, new Windows 12 release. Whether that’s enough to change how people feel about Windows remains to be seen, but Microsoft needs to give people a reason to be excited about Windows again, not just another reason to tolerate it.

I’m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.

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