watchOS 26 is the twelfth and current release of watchOS, shipped September 15, 2025, under the year-aligned numbering shared across Apple's platforms. It wears the family's Liquid Glass design — translucent controls, refreshed faces — and adds Workout Buddy: an Apple Intelligence coach that speaks encouragement and milestone callouts during workouts, generated from the user's own fitness history (nearby AI-capable iPhone required).

The wrist-flick gesture dismisses notifications one-handed, the Smart Stack sharpens its hints, Notes finally reaches the wrist, and Messages gains live translation plus context-aware smart actions.

Liquid Glass; Workout Buddy; the wrist-flick gesture; Notes on watch; Messages live translation, backgrounds, and polls; Smart Stack hints; hypertension-notification groundwork delivered with the Series 11 cycle; and automatic volume-adjusting Ambient Music.

Still current — the release that put generative AI on the wrist and folded the watch into the ecosystem's unified design and numbering. Its successor, watchOS 27, is in beta with the Siri AI generation.