What's the latest OpenClaw version, and should you update?

Whether to update to the latest OpenClaw release, what each recent release fixes and changes, what to do first, and how to check the version your agent runs.

The short answer

The latest stable OpenClaw release is 2026.10.9, published on October 29, 2026. Should you update? If you run 2026.10.8, take it when you want what it fixes rather than at once, unless you use Microsoft Teams, an Azure sign-in or IMAP sender checks, which its security fixes cover: it is a small security and maintenance release on the same line, and it does not carry the main-branch fixes most of the reports below wait for. The exception is a transcript archive too large to migrate, which held some setups on 2026.10.7 or earlier: this release’s notes list its fix (#170853). Whichever release you come from, start the update from a terminal with openclaw update, not from chat, since a chat update to this release can stop on authority-check-failed (#178291), and on macOS with a LaunchAgent check afterwards that the Gateway is still running (#188303). If you run 2026.10.7 or 2026.10.6, take it soon, with a backup: it carries 2026.10.8’s security fixes, whose certificate change applies once the Gateway restarts. On 2026.10.5 or earlier, update Node to 24.22.1 or 26.12.1 first on an npm, pnpm or source install, since an older Node is behind most failed updates from there. On 2026.10.4 or earlier, make a backup and run Doctor, because 2026.10.5 moved agent databases to a format older releases cannot read, and from 2026.9.9 or earlier the first start imports any old Telegram message queue, skipping entries older than 24 hours.

For the live answer, run npm view openclaw dist-tags: the latest tag is the stable release. Each release below links its notes and changelog, and the GitHub release identifies the matching npm package. A Docker install must also check that the image tag it uses exists for that version.

What each recent release fixes and changes

OpenClaw 2026.10.9 · October 29, 2026

What it fixes and adds: A maintenance release of under fifty pull requests after 2026.10.8, with no new features, cut from the same line rather than from OpenClaw’s main branch. Its security fixes: MCP tools reject malformed addresses in their input definitions; Microsoft Teams and affected Azure sign-ins take a library fix for a flaw that could send application credentials to the wrong destination; IMAP sender checks no longer accept a spoofed sender hidden in nested comments of the From header; Canvas and Discord Activity reject oversized collections; workspace-only file access now also limits the Gateway’s own delegation and media tools; and MCP inspection on the command line hides credentials, while Google sign-in client secrets are masked in console and log-tail output. Among the rest: large compressed conversation archives are migrated one record at a time instead of stopping Doctor and startup (#170853); agents accept writes again once disk space is freed, without a restart (#176902); stale search indexes after a Node or SQLite upgrade are repaired in place rather than treated as damaged data; a failed update of a Git checkout keeps local edits; some failed same-version updates no longer leave the Gateway stopped; repair works on a package update interrupted by a filesystem remount; overlapping sign-in refreshes no longer fail chat and model-list requests (#179144); and new ACP sessions start in the requested folder (#176852). The main-branch fixes are still in 2026.10.10, in beta.

What changes for a running setup: An MCP tool whose input definition carries a malformed address may now fail validation. If you set tools.fs.workspaceOnly, it now also keeps the Gateway’s delegation and media tools inside the workspace.

Reports on OpenClaw’s tracker on October 30, 2026, filed against this release or an earlier one and still met on this line, which was a day old when they were read:

On macOS with a LaunchAgent, the automatic update from 2026.10.8 to this release left the Gateway stopped and unregistered from launchd, twice in one day, so nothing restarted it and the Control UI was unreachable; the fixes a collaborator points to are on the main branch. launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.openclaw.gateway.plist (or openclaw gateway start), then openclaw doctor --fix, brought it back. (#188303)
An update started from chat (/update) from 2026.10.8 to this release stops in its post-activation Doctor on a false authority-check-failed, reported on Linux and macOS, as it did on earlier releases; the fix (#188472) is merged on the main branch and in no release yet. A maintainer’s advice: start the update from a terminal with openclaw update, and if a run has already failed this way, finish it with openclaw update repair from a terminal. (#178291)
The most reported update failure from 2026.10.5 or earlier: openclaw update fails at the package install (global-install-failed) on a Node older than 24.22.1 (or 26.12.1 on the 26 line), reported four times on macOS and Linux from 2026.10.5 to 2026.10.8 (#185908 among them). Update Node, run openclaw gateway install --force so the service uses it (openclaw gateway status --deep shows which runtime it runs), then update again. (#180636)
On 2026.10.7 with npm on Linux, the second message in a Control UI or app conversation fails with Session read batch cannot reenter an active SQLite writer admission and gets no reply, while Discord keeps working; it was reported on 2026.10.5 too. The fix (#168607) is on the main branch, not in this release or 2026.10.8, and a maintainer is keeping the report open until the fix ships in a release. (#182744)
On Ubuntu with npm, a systemd user service and 3.4 GiB of state, the update from 2026.10.6 to 2026.10.7 succeeded but took about 64 minutes, with the Gateway down for about 28 of them while database files were copied and hashed; an update from 2026.10.8 to this release on Windows 11 failed with Update candidate validation exceeded its 1800-second budget. A maintainer’s change on the main branch stops copying the whole shared database, and other whole-database reads remain open. (#182616)
On Ubuntu with npm, a transcript archive that decodes to more than 512 MiB stopped the update to 2026.10.8 and earlier at its media migration with Cannot create a string longer than 0x1fffffe8 characters, and blocked openclaw update repair and openclaw doctor --fix, while the old version kept running. This release’s notes list the fix (#170853); the report is still open, and no one on it has yet confirmed the update on this release. (#185656)
openclaw doctor --fix --non-interactive can idle for 15 minutes or more in its plugin-capture stage with no output: reported on 2026.10.3, met on 2026.10.8 on Windows 11 and Linux, and reproduced on this release, where a read-only openclaw doctor finished in about six minutes and --fix hung until killed; run with the Gateway still running it can loop until killed (2026.10.4, #174842). (#178359)
On macOS with a LaunchAgent, openclaw doctor --fix on 2026.10.7 stopped the Gateway and then spent more than nine minutes re-hashing databases; its fix is first in 2026.10.10, still in beta. A Doctor run interrupted with SIGTERM left the Gateway stopped in one run of three (#182683, open, and reproduced on this release on Windows, where the scheduled task was left disabled), and on macOS launchctl bootstrap gui/<uid> ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.openclaw.gateway.plist brought it back. (#182738)
With trusted-proxy authentication and named roles (a Fedora container, a systemd user service), the update from 2026.10.7 to 2026.10.8 kept retrying its check on AUTH_VERIFIED_USER_REQUIRED for about 18 minutes while the Gateway was healthy; stopping the updater and running openclaw update repair finished it. The fix (#185995) is merged, and this release’s notes do not list it. (#185946)
On Windows with the Gateway run in a terminal rather than as a service, the update from 2026.10.6 aborts with gateway-stop-unverified, and the report was closed as not planned; stopping the Gateway with Ctrl+C and updating again gets through, as does installing directly with npm i -g openclaw@<version> and starting it again with openclaw gateway run. (#182748)
Open since 2026.9.5, met four times in sixteen hours on 2026.10.6 (earlier reports #181152 and #180276) and again on October 29: after a long freeze of the Gateway’s event loop (a laptop’s sleep, memory pressure on a small host, a failed sign-in refresh), one agent’s reply runtime is never published again, every message to it fails with runtime owner was not published while the process, the port and /healthz all read healthy, and only a Gateway restart recovers; the symptom is a bot that reads messages and never answers. No release carries a fix. (#158592)
The Gateway’s memory grows steadily until it runs out after about 20 hours: reported on 2026.10.7, since on 2026.10.4 and on 2026.10.7 in Docker on arm64, and not yet tested on this release; the candidate fixes are in 2026.10.10’s betas. (#185578)
Agent commands can fail with Direct shared-state reader requires current integrity admission, reported on 2026.10.5 and through October 30 on 2026.10.8, where only a restart clears it; a review of this release’s source finds the same code, and the fix on the main branch (#169584) is not in it. (#177656)
In Docker on 2026.10.8, reloading the page in the middle of the Control UI’s Telegram channel setup holds the setup lock, and every later setup fails with setup is already in progress until the Gateway restarts (tracked in #144969, whose fix is not merged). (#186105)
In Docker on 2026.10.5, 4 of 20 agent turns started from the command line failed with Canonical session reader continuation is no longer current seconds after the provider had answered the request, and the caller got no reply; it is reported on every release from 2026.10.5 to 2026.10.8, and the report is open. (#181078)
On Ubuntu with npm and a systemd user service, an unattended update from 2026.9.9 to 2026.10.5 stopped twice with exit code 78: first on a configuration key 2026.10.5 removed (skills.workshop.approvalPolicy), then on the agent database format, whose repair with openclaw doctor --fix took twenty to forty minutes with the Gateway stopped; an interrupted openclaw update repair then left a record that blocked every plugin’s migration until a manual database edit. Fixes for the hanging config validate and the stale repair record are on the main branch, not in this release. (#178177)
In Docker Swarm with a start-first rolling update, the new Gateway crash-looped with exit code 78 on the pending agent database migration while the old task still held the state; the maintainers’ reading is that Doctor needs exclusive ownership, so stop the old container before starting the new image. (#177789)
In Docker with a ChatGPT sign-in and the Codex plugin enabled, codex app-server processes accumulated to 54 in six hours and the Gateway stopped answering chats and Telegram once the container’s process limit was reached; the fix (#168387) is first in 2026.10.10, still in beta. (#178804)
After a restart, a single agent’s sessions can stay unavailable (2026.10.1) or every run can fail with published reply runtime missing until the next restart (2026.10.2, #170762); both reports were closed with fixes on the main branch that no stable release carries, so a real message is the test after a restart, not a health check. (#171018)
On 2026.10.4, a forced Gateway stop in the middle of a turn left a restart-recovery claim on the session, and every new Telegram message was refused for 17 minutes until an operator reset the session, losing its context. (#177162)
In Docker with the state directory on a persistent volume, a hard kill leaves the Gateway’s state lock behind, and starts are refused with failed to acquire gateway state ownership until it expires after about five minutes; a restart policy that retries faster keeps it refused, so wait it out or clear it with OpenClaw’s lock-recovery steps. Reported on 2026.9.8. (#179824)
In the stock Docker image on one CPU, 2026.9.9 and 2026.10.1 use about two and a half times the memory of 2026.9.4 (a peak near 1.9 GB against 0.7 GB) and take over 40 seconds to become ready against 13, reproduced on 2026.10.2 and still reported on 2026.10.7; 2026.10.5 and later load memory indexes on demand (#174718), and a request to backport the October memory fixes to the extended-stable line is open (#179515). (#169797)
On any channel, a message containing text that looks like a credential, such as an Authorization: Bearer header, an environment variable assignment or an OAuth callback address, fails its turn; the fix is only in 2026.10.10’s betas, a contributor confirms 2026.10.5 to 2026.10.8 carry no backport, and this release’s notes do not list it. (#169154)
With Ollama and Qwen models, tool calls can arrive as plain text and never run while Tool Search is on, which is the default; 2026.10.6 carries a maintainer’s fix for one cause (#167933), the report stays open, and setting tools.toolSearch to false works around it. (#165787)
On Windows, 2026.10.2 took seven to nine minutes to become ready with 32 agents, 2026.10.1 started about two and a half times slower than 2026.9.9 (#168955), 2026.10.3 shows event-loop stalls of 76 to 163 seconds during turns (#176067), and two reports from updates to 2026.9.9 are still open (#167652, #168468); a startup speed-up measured on the main branch is not in this release. (#170928)

Before updating: Coming from 2026.10.8, nothing beyond a backup: the data format and the Node requirement are unchanged. Coming from 2026.10.7 or 2026.10.6, the same, and a check that the Gateway restarted afterwards, which 2026.10.8’s certificate fix needs. From any of them, start the update from a terminal rather than from chat (#178291 above). Coming from 2026.10.5 or earlier, update Node first (24.22.1 or 26.12.1 or newer; Docker images carry it), and everything under 2026.10.6 below applies, with this version’s number in the direct install (npm i -g openclaw@2026.10.9 --allow-scripts=openclaw, without the last option on npm 11.15 and earlier).

2026.10.9 release notes · Markdown changelog

OpenClaw 2026.10.8 · October 27, 2026

What it fixes and adds: A patch release of 161 pull requests after 2026.10.7, with no new features, cut from the same line rather than from OpenClaw’s main branch. Its security fixes: the secret egress proxy and the trust bundle it exports stop trusting the certificate root affected by the eMudhra compromise; exec allowlists no longer trust test -v or [ -v on their own; agents can no longer reach browser-proxy commands through a paired node; sandboxed child agents can no longer run a CLI model on the host; and Fish Audio and Gradium errors no longer show an API key. Among the rest: a failed Doctor run after an update restarts the Gateway; Gateway service installs recover on macOS and work under Ubuntu’s default umask; startup retries transient agent database locks; inbound messages stop retrying forever and a retried Control UI message delivers its reply (a different failure from #182744); commands work under a Windows S4U scheduled task (#182652); Codex turns keep their time budget with an older Codex plugin (#181619); Gateway shutdown finishes after a timed-out plugin retirement (#181106); default Slack, Google Chat, X and other channel accounts keep starting after a named account is added; and Tailscale Serve and Funnel recover after tailscaled restarts. The main-branch fixes most of the reports above wait for are not in it.

What changes for a running setup: Connections that rely only on the excluded eMudhra root fail, and apps with their own trust stores or bypass tunnels need their own updates. A sandboxed child agent can no longer use a CLI model on the host: give it an API-backed model, or change the sandbox policy. An exec allowlist that relied on test -v or [ -v may need an entry or an approval. Some X accounts need to authorize again once. On Windows, commands that need PowerShell 7 syntax need PowerShell 7 installed from its MSI or ZIP.

Before updating: Coming from 2026.10.7 or 2026.10.6, nothing beyond a backup, and a check that the Gateway restarted afterwards, which the certificate fix needs. Coming from 2026.10.5 or earlier, update Node first (24.22.1 or 26.12.1 or newer; Docker images carry it), and everything under 2026.10.6 below applies, with this version’s number in the direct install (npm i -g openclaw@2026.10.8 --allow-scripts=openclaw, without the last option on npm 11.15 and earlier).

2026.10.8 release notes · Markdown changelog

OpenClaw 2026.10.7 · October 24, 2026

What it fixes and adds: A fix release of 70 pull requests after 2026.10.6. Interrupted sessions keep what they had recovered and their unfinished tool results, a stopped conversation clears its recovery state before it takes new messages, and rejected Claude CLI drafts stay out of final replies. A verified update stays successful through later errors, an interrupted package update resumes safely, and update guidance no longer gives database-repair advice when a package manager is missing. Backups keep supported legacy exec-approval policies, a failed multi-file patch keeps the files it had already written, and Memory Wiki re-imports keep notes people wrote. Linux Gateway dashboards stay paired across restarts, and a deleted temporary log directory no longer pins the Gateway at full CPU when the date rolls over (#130807). Several fixes on OpenClaw’s main branch that the reports above name are not in it, nor in 2026.10.8 or 2026.10.9, and the maintainers place them in 2026.10.10, still in beta.

Before updating: Coming from 2026.10.6, nothing beyond a backup: the data format and the Node requirement are unchanged. Coming from 2026.10.5 or earlier, everything under 2026.10.6 below applies, with this version’s number in the direct install (npm i -g openclaw@2026.10.7 --allow-scripts=openclaw, without the last option on npm 11.15 and earlier).

2026.10.7 release notes · Markdown changelog

OpenClaw 2026.10.6 · October 22, 2026

What it fixes and adds: A release of reliability fixes on the 2026.10.5 line, 293 pull requests and no new features. Its image and installers move to Node 24.22.1 (or 26.12.1 on the 26 line), the runtime that closes Node’s October 2026 security flaws, and openclaw update refuses to install on an older Node instead of breaking the running install. Doctor recovers the reserved system agent’s database that a schema-changing update could leave held and the Gateway crash-looping (#176669); package swaps refuse unsafe service states, frozen Gateway startup owners can be retired and stop-time lease deadlocks are gone; queued turns, watched child results and streamed replies survive a restart without disappearing or duplicating; GPT-5.6 tool turns and OpenRouter DeepSeek tool calls behave; Telegram albums and dual-stack replies no longer lose or duplicate messages; unfinished tool calls time out visibly.

What changes for a running setup: Node 24.22.1 or newer on the 24 line, or 26.12.1 or newer on the 26 line, is required; source builds pin pnpm 12.15.0.

Before updating: Update Node first on an npm, pnpm or source install (24.22.1 or 26.12.1 or newer); Docker images carry it. Stored data stays at 2026.10.5’s format, so coming from 2026.10.4 or earlier, 2026.10.5’s one-way move applies. Agent databases move to a format 2026.10.4 and older cannot open, so going back means restoring a backup made before the update; Doctor leaves a verified copy of each database beside the original. Two retired configuration formats need an intermediate upgrade through 2026.9.5 and openclaw doctor --fix first, and six retired state files need 2026.9.7’s Doctor on the original host. The Skill Workshop proposal settings are removed: Doctor migrates them, but a Gateway started on a configuration that still carries them exits with code 78. An old Telegram message queue is imported once, without entries older than 24 hours, so review anything you still need first. Two behaviours change from 2026.10.5 on: Skill Workshop’s background learning sends conversation and tool content to your model provider and can add usage charges, and a published conversation link exposes the conversation’s future messages to anyone holding it. If openclaw update from an older release fails, the maintainers’ way past it: stop the Gateway, install the package directly as the same user (npm i -g openclaw@2026.10.6 --allow-scripts=openclaw for an npm install, without the last option on npm 11.15 and earlier), run openclaw update repair or openclaw doctor --fix, then start the Gateway. Coming from 2026.9.9 or earlier, 2026.10.1 also moved shared state to a format older releases cannot open and retired plugin interfaces; its notes, in the release index below, list what to pass through first.

2026.10.6 release notes · Markdown changelog

Release notes, changelog and the GitHub releases list

OpenClaw publishes each release’s notes twice with the same content: formatted release notes for people, and a plain-Markdown changelog for agents and tools. The release notes index lists every release with links to both. A single release can run to thousands of changes (2026.9.7 lists 2,818 pull requests), so the Markdown file is the one to hand an agent: give it the changelogs between your version and the target, and ask what affects your setup.

The GitHub releases list mixes in two other kinds of entry. Versions with a patch number of 33 or higher are extended-stable releases: 2026.9.36, published on October 29, 2026, is OpenClaw from the end of September plus critical security updates, reliability and performance fixes and support for new models, which its notes call OpenClaw’s current equivalent to LTS. It is not newer than the 2026.10 releases listed around it. An entry named for the Linux update channel points at the newest build of the Linux companion app.

Security fixes are announced separately, as security advisories that name the affected and first fixed versions. They can appear well after the fix ships: a batch published on September 11, 2026 covered fixes that had shipped as far back as 2026.7.1.

Check which version you are running

openclaw --version
openclaw status --all
openclaw update status
npm view openclaw dist-tags

Copied

The first command reads the installed CLI. The second asks the running Gateway, which reports its own version under Gateway self; that can differ from the CLI’s when the package was replaced but the Gateway not yet restarted. If the Gateway service and the CLI point at different installations, the status command names both, with their versions. The third shows your update channel, the current version and whether an update is available, and the fourth reads npm’s current channel tags. Run them on the computer that runs the agent, not on a laptop used to reach it.

Which release channel are you following?

The official release-channel reference distinguishes four choices:

Stable uses npm’s latest tag and is the project’s recommendation for most users.
Extended-stable follows an older month’s release line with fixes backported to it. It installs packages only, never updates automatically, and is not a promise that the newest features are available.
Beta selects the newer version from the beta and stable tags, so an older beta does not replace a newer stable.
Dev tracks the repository’s moving main branch. It can include unfinished changes and is not the production channel.

A merged fix is not necessarily in the release you installed. Check the release notes for the version containing it: the cancelled configuration-approval bug is one case where that distinction changes the answer.

Why Docker and npm can disagree

In July 2026, npm offered patch packages newer than 2026.7.1 before their container images existed, so a Docker install stayed on 2026.7.1 while its dashboard kept advertising an update. One release’s gap does not establish a delay for every later one.

Compare like with like. A package version, a container image tag and the version inside a running container are three separate checks. Images are tagged by version, as in ghcr.io/openclaw/openclaw:<version> with slim and browser variants, and the image’s package page lists every published tag. The moving tags, such as latest, are rebuilt weekly from the same release to pick up operating-system security updates, so pin a version tag or a digest when you need to know exactly what runs. Changing the image in a Compose file does not by itself replace a running container: OpenClaw’s Docker update steps cover the replacement, and our OpenClaw update guide covers the state and recovery checks around it.

Before updating an existing agent

Read what changed in every release between your installed version and the target, especially removals, new requirements and changes to stored data. Keep a verified pre-update backup. Some releases change stored data in one direction only: 2026.9.5, 2026.9.6, 2026.9.7, 2026.10.1 and 2026.10.5 each moved agent databases or shared state to formats older versions cannot read. Reinstalling an older package is therefore not the same as restoring the agent to its previous state. The official update guide starts from that distinction; the version number alone cannot tell you whether a rollback will be simple. (On Everpod’s OpenClaw pod, updates are applied for you after testing.)