KDE Plasma 6.8 drops X11: Wayland becomes mandatory from October 2026
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KDE has removed the X11 session from Plasma. From Plasma 6.8 in October 2026, only Wayland will be available at login; X11 apps will still run via XWayland.
KDE Plasma users who could previously choose between X11 and Wayland at login will lose that option with the next major release. KDE had already prepared the move away from its own X11 session at the end of 2025. Now the first visible step has been taken: starting with Plasma 6.8, the desktop will offer only a Wayland session.
KDE makes Wayland the only session in Plasma 6.8
After roughly three decades, the KDE community is retiring its own X11 session. KDE developer David Edmundson explained the move in a blog post, although the underlying decision had already been made earlier. The X11 session has now been removed from the development branch, and the remaining X11-specific code paths are set to follow.
Plasma 6.8: X11 session disappears from the login screen
With Plasma 6.8, the login screen will only offer the Plasma Wayland session. KDE also plans to remove X11-specific code from Plasma Shell, System Settings and device configuration in this release. That makes Plasma 6.7 the last version expected to ship with a dedicated X11 session. It is scheduled for mid-June 2026, while Plasma 6.8 is currently expected around October 14, 2026.
Source: KDE e.V.
KDE Plasma 6.8 will be the first version to ship without an X11 session.
For most users, day-to-day use should not change much. Traditional X11 applications will continue to run through XWayland. KDE applications used under other desktop environments are not affected either, and display managers can still start X11 sessions provided by other desktops.
The Wayland transition in KDE Plasma is almost complete
KDE says Wayland is already the default for the vast majority of current Plasma users. Internal figures put the Wayland share among Plasma 6.6 users at more than 95 percent. Including older installations, such as Plasma 5.27 LTS, lowers that figure to around 76 percent.
Those older systems are not being changed retroactively. Users on long-term-support distributions or older Plasma releases will keep the X11 session they already have. In practice, KDE says very few people are still developing or testing Plasma on X11.
Plasma 6.8 and gaming: What Geforce users should know
For Linux gaming, Wayland has become much more capable in recent years. Features such as Adaptive Sync, variable refresh rates and complex multi-monitor setups now work well in many Plasma environments. Nvidia's proprietary driver, once one of the biggest sources of Wayland-related problems, has also improved significantly. Current GeForce cards now work much better with Plasma on Wayland, including support for features such as HDR output. Users with very old Nvidia GPUs may still run into limitations; in those cases, switching to the Nouveau driver or using another desktop environment with an X11 session remains an option.
Quelle: KDE e.V.
