Dear LAMMPS Users and Developers,
I am pleased to announce a new LAMMPS feature release (version 2 September 2026) that was just made available for download on GitHub and on the LAMMPS homepage.
This is the candidate for the 2026 stable version release and we’ll now only perform extended testing and apply bugfixes until the stable version release in a few weeks. In fact, while waiting for some features to complete, we already performed a lot of testing.
Like the 4 July 2026 version, this is a release with an unusually large number of changes and additions. A few highlights:
- ports of many more styles to the KOKKOS and OPENMP packages. We have now about 2.5 accelerated versions for each standard style, lots of improvements and bugfixes to existing ports
- many added internal tests and improved regression testing based on the examples tree and reference log files
- many more enhancements to the dump image command: depth cueing, depth of focus, outline effect, metal effect, display gamma adjustments
- consolidated VTK output using a common class that in turn is independent from the VTK library
- resolving many feature requests and bug reports in the issue tracker (almost all bug reports are now resolved or have a pending pull request associated that addresses it).
You can see the detailed release notes here: Release Feature release 2 September 2026 · lammps/lammps · GitHub
The binary packages with the LAMMPS and the GUI now include LAMMPS-GUI version 3.0.99 which was released recently. LAMMPS-GUI 3.0.99 is the release candidate for the 3.1.x stable release of LAMMPS-GUI.
Standalone versions of the LAMMPS-GUI binaries are also available.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If your are experiencing crashes with the LAMMPS-Linux-x86_64-GUI-2Sep2026.tar.gz package, please either download https://download.lammps.org/testing/LAMMPS-Linux-x86_64-GUI-2Sep2026-v2.tar.gz or delete LAMMPS_GUI/lib/libxkbcommon.so.0 and LAMMPS_GUI/lib/libxkbcommon.so.0.0.0 in the already downloaded and extracted package. If you are still experiencing issues, you could try https://download.lammps.org/testing/LAMMPS-Linux-x86_64-GUI-2Sep2026-v3.tar.gz instead or submit a bug report issue at Issues · lammps/lammps · GitHub and let us know what the specific issues are and what exact platform you are using the package on.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
We have reports confirming that the LAMMPS-macOS-multiarch-GUI-2Sep2026.dmg app bundle does not have a multi-arch LAMMPS-GUI binary, but that one operates on Apple CPUs in x86_64 emulation. The cause has been identified and will be corrected in the LAMMPS source distribution soon. A corrected package has been uploaded here: https://download.lammps.org/testing/LAMMPS-macOS-multiarch-GUI-2Sep2026.dmg. Please let us know if you still have problems with that package or see warnings about still using x86_64 emulation.
As a special gimmick to go along with the extended testing we now have a LAMMPS Testing Dashboard Website where you can see the consolidated test status across the entire test matrix and links to the individial issues.