Upgrading to a new release of Fedora

Upgrading to the next Fedora Workstation release

As of Fedora Workstation 23, when the next stable release is available a graphical notification will appear similar to the update notifications. Clicking this, or running the Software application and going to the Updates pane, will display a simple graphical interface for upgrading the system. It will download the upgrade files, then prompt for a reboot to install them, similar to a system update. When the upgrade is complete, the system will automatically reboot into the new release.

Upgrading using the DNF System Upgrade plugin

This method is used to a upgrade Fedora installation using the command-line. It is also used to troubleshoot issues with packages preventing the graphical method from upgrading.

For instructions on upgrading with the DNF system upgrade plugin, refer to the DNF System Upgrade page.

Upgrading between major versions in Fedora Silverblue

For instructions on upgrading Fedora Silverblue Host, refer to the dedicated page.

Can I upgrade between Fedora releases using only DNF?

Upgrading between Fedora releases without the DNF System Upgrade plugin or GNOME Software are not tested by the Fedora QA team, and are therefore not supported by the community. You can follow Upgrading Fedora using package manager, but you’re doing that at your own risk.

Upgrading from pre-release (beta) to final public release (stable)

If you are using a pre-release of Fedora, you shouldn’t need to do anything to get the final public release, other than updating packages as they become available. You can use sudo dnf update or wait for desktop notification. When the pre-release is released as final, the fedora-repos packages will be updated and your updates-testing repository will be disabled. Once this happens (on the release day), it is highly recommended to run sudo dnf distro-sync in order to align package versions with the current release.

How do I upgrade to Rawhide and Branched?

Rawhide and Branched are the development releases of Fedora. They are suitable for users developing or testing Fedora before public release. They are NOT SUITABLE for regular day-to-day use unless you are a fairly experienced user, and certainly not suitable for mission-critical use. You should read through those pages carefully before deciding to run Branched or Rawhide. See the Fedora Life Cycle for more information on how the whole Fedora cycle works from Rawhide, to Branched, to the milestone releases (Beta), to the ‘Final’ release.

Upgrading to a Branched release or to Rawhide can be done using DNF System Upgrade.

Can I upgrade from an End Of Life (EOL) release?

Fedora strongly discourages running an end-of-life release on any production system, or any system connected to the public internet. You should never allow a production Fedora deployment to reach end-of-life in the first place.

With that in mind, if you do have an end-of-life release installed on a system you cannot just discard or re-deploy, you can attempt to upgrade it, though this is not officially tested or supported.

If you have Fedora 21 or later, you can try to upgrade using DNF System Upgrade.

If you have Fedora 20 or earlier, you will have to perform at least part of the upgrade with bare yum. You can either use that method to upgrade to Fedora 21 or later and then use DNF system upgrade to upgrade from there to a currently-supported release, or just use bare dnf or yum for the entire upgrade process.

Note that when upgrading from Fedora 20 or earlier, you are both upgrading from an end-of-life release and using a not-officially-recommended upgrade mechanism; such upgrades are very much performed ‘at your own risk’ and may well require various kinds of manual intervention to run and clean up the upgraded system, if they work at all.

Upgrading using the Fedora installer (anaconda)?

Fedora releases up to Fedora 17 included upgrade functionality in the Fedora installer, anaconda. This can be a better choice than a package manager upgrade for some End Of Life (EOL) upgrades. If you are attempting to upgrade from Fedora 16 or older, it is highly recommended to upgrade to Fedora 16 and perform an installer upgrade from Fedora 16 to Fedora 17 before upgrading any further.

To upgrade using the installer, boot the system from a network install or DVD image for the target release, and run through the initial steps of the install process. After you select storage devices the installer should offer you the option to upgrade the installed system.