It’s out! ROS 2 Lyrical Luth has officially landed, and I have to say: this is the release I’ve been looking forward to for a while. It’s the twelfth ROS 2 distribution and a brand new Long-Term Support (LTS) release, supported until May 2031.
It pairs with Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute” as its primary Tier 1 platform, which makes total sense: Lyrical Luth + Ubuntu 26.04 is the LTS-on-LTS combo that most production teams have been waiting for. If you’re still on ROS 2 Humble with Ubuntu 22.04, now is a great time to start planning your migration.
What’s new compared to Jazzy?
Jazzy Jalisco was a good release, but Lyrical Luth brings some things that genuinely excited me when I read the changelog. Let me walk you through what I think is most interesting.
Callback Group Events Executor
This one is huge for performance. The new CallbackGroupEventsExecutor uses 10–15% less CPU than the classic SingleThreadedExecutor and MultiThreadedExecutor. It also comes with proper support for multiple time sources and finer threading control. On nodes with a lot of callbacks, this is a meaningful free win; you just switch executor type and get better efficiency for nothing. Can’t wait to try it on my setups!
Async ROS Nodes in Python (AsyncNode)
Finally! rclpy now has an AsyncNode base class that integrates ROS callbacks natively with Python’s asyncio event loop. If you’ve ever wrestled with mixing async code and ROS subscribers, you know how painful that could be. This makes the whole thing much cleaner and more CPU-efficient than the default SingleThreadedExecutor.
Zero-Copy GPU Data Transfer
This is the one I’m personally most excited about. rosidl::Buffer now lets you publish and subscribe to ROS messages without copying data between CPU and GPU memory. The initial support is for rmw_fastrtps_cpp, but it’s a game changer for any pipeline that touches deep learning or computer vision; the cost of memcpy between GPU frames has always been a silent killer of latency budgets.
Parameters and configuration
- YAML type annotations: you can now use
!!str,!!bool,!!int,!!floattags in parameter files to resolve ambiguous type interpretation once and for all - Parameter range validation extended to integer and double arrays, not just scalars
- Expanded
ros2 paramCLI with batch operations on single nodes
Launch file improvements
A bunch of quality-of-life improvements here that will make launch files nicer to write and maintain:
- New substitutions:
string-joinandpath-joinfor XML/YAML launch files - Per-message log level control: granular severity per message directly from the launch file
- Runtime logging backend selection: via
RCL_LOGGING_IMPLEMENTATIONenv variable, no rebuild needed
Bag recording enhancements
Several additions I’ve wanted for a long time:
- Remote control via ROS service APIs; start/stop/discover bags from anywhere on the network
- Python bag APIs for programmatic pause, resume, seek, and state queries
- Circular recording with
--max-bag-filesto cap disk usage by auto-deleting the oldest splits - Descriptive split naming with counter, prefix, and timestamp built in
- Per-topic message loss statistics published to
events/rosbag2_messages_lost
CLI enhancements
ros2 topic bwcan now monitor multiple topics at onceros2 service info --verboseshows QoS profiles and endpoint detailsros2 doctor --reportexpanded to include actions, services, and ROS env variables- Fish shell support is finally here alongside bash/zsh 🐟
URDF 1.2
The robot description format gets a proper update:
- Quaternion support via
quat_xyzw, no more euler-only rotations - Capsule geometry as a new collision primitive
- Acceleration, deceleration, and jerk limits in joint definitions
robot_state_publishercan now subscribe torobot_descriptiontopic instead of only publishing it
Tracing
For anyone doing serious performance work:
- Runtime opt-out via
TRACETOOLS_RUNTIME_DISABLE=1disable instrumentation without a rebuild - Snapshot mode with LTTng for “flight recorder” style memory-buffered capture
- Dual session tracing with separate sessions for initialization and runtime events
Developer quality of life
- Thread naming utilities in
rcpputilsfor easier profiling and debugging class_loaderplugins can now accept constructor arguments for initialization parametersrcutilsgains Base64 encoding/decoding andstrnlenfor platform compatibility- New CMake target
ament_ros_defaultsfor consistent C/C++ version specification across packages
Supported platforms
| Tier | Platform |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ubuntu 26.04 amd64 / arm64 |
| 1 | Windows 11 (VS 2022) amd64 |
| 2 | RHEL 10 amd64 |
| 3 | Ubuntu 24.04, macOS, Debian Trixie, OpenEmbedded |
By the numbers
Behind every apt install ros-lyrical-* there’s a massive community effort: 239 contributors, 110 beta testers, and nearly 2,651 test cases executed. That’s pretty impressive, and it shows how healthy the ROS ecosystem remains.
What’s next?
The next non-LTS distribution, ROS 2 Makoa Mata-mata, is already on the calendar for May 2027.
If you’re on Jazzy, migration should be pretty smooth; most new features are additive and things like the executor change are opt-in. I covered the highlights here, but the full changelog is extensive, so check the official Lyrical Luth release notes for the complete picture before jumping in on production systems.
Happy robotics programming! 🤖
