conda and conda-build 26.9.0 are out. Since our June and July update, conda-pypi, constructor, rattler, grayskull, and several other projects have shipped releases too.

The June and July 2026 releases included updates to conda, conda-build, conda-libmamba-solver, conda-pypi, constructor, menuinst, rattler, and more! 🎉 All of these have been released to both defaults and conda-forge channels.

Here is a situation a lot of conda users know: you are working in conda environment, you reach for one more package, and it isn't in any conda channel you have configured. The conda way forward isn't obvious, so you run pip install <some-package>. The package installs successfully, your work continues, and the decision appears harmless. Then, perhaps the following day or several months later, the environment breaks while you are installing, updating, or removing something that seems completely unrelated.

The May 2026 releases span conda, conda-build, conda-libmamba-solver, conda-pypi, and conda-rattler-solver! 🎉 You'll find them on the main and conda-forge channels.

For conda, lockfiles are a first-class workflow now, the CLI is lighter on everyday commands, and there is more under the hood for channel metadata and future dependency specs. Step-by-step opt-in for beta previews—Rattler and conda-pypi—is on New features to try.

Preface​

This post is adapted from a talk I gave at PyConDE & PyData 2026.

In it, I walk through the evolution of Python packaging, from distutils to pip, and later to conda, and how these tools emerged in response to different needs within the Python community.

The ideas in this post are based on my experience as a maintainer in the conda ecosystem and conversations I’ve had with users and contributors over time. A recurring theme in those discussions is the tendency to frame conda and pip as competing tools.

What I’ve found more useful is to view them instead as parts of different ecosystems, shaped by different constraints and priorities. That perspective also helps explain why mixing them can sometimes lead to unexpected behavior in practice.

This post is an attempt to share that perspective in a more structured form.

A vision for conda in 2026 is a package manager that is fast (real-time progress, sharded repodata, lighter shell integration, Rattler integration), trusted (better error messages, smarter confirmation friction, streaming output), and delightful (sensible defaults, helpful suggestions, intentional visuals, accessibility). Beyond the core CLI, the roadmap includes native PyPI wheel support, declarative conda.toml project environments, single-binary installers, and a comprehensive API for IDE and agent integrations.

The March 2026 releases included updates to conda, conda-build, conda-libmamba-solver, conda-content-trust, conda-rattler-solver, conda-standalone, constructor, and conda-pypi! 🎉 All of these have been released to both defaults and conda-forge channels.

Over the last few months, the conda steering council has put significant resources into reducing the standardization debt in the conda ecosystem. This effort culminated in the approval of 10 new CEPs covering the foundational pillars of conda. This is a turning point in our community that is worth celebrating with a blog post!

condastats is a command-line tool and Python library for querying download statistics of conda packages from the Anaconda public dataset. The project hadn't seen a release since August 2022, so we spent some time updating it to work with current Python and pandas versions, cleaning up the codebase, rewriting the documentation, and adding an interactive browser demo. The result is condastats 0.4.2 -- here's what's new and how to use it.

The January 2026 releases included updates to conda, conda-build, and conda-pack! 🎉 All of these have been released to both defaults and conda-forge channels.