WHAT’S NEW IN SIBELIUS February 2026

by Joe Plazak, Sr. Principal Product Manager

Dark Theme, Cross-Stave Beaming, High-Res Icons, and More

The team is pleased to announce our first 2026 release packed with some long-awaited features. It’s available now on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android^TM devices.

In this release, we’ve completely refreshed the icons throughout the Ribbon on desktop, updated the font on Mac, introduced a brand-new dark color theme, and begun our long-awaited effort to improve cross-staff notation workflows across all platforms. We’ve also added enhancements to our ManuScript plugin scripting language and fixed a significant number of priority issues raised by the community. Let’s dig in and unpack what you can find in Sibelius 2026.2.

Sibelius Color Themes on Windows and macOS

Like Sibelius for mobile, desktop versions now have two color themes: light and dark! You can toggle between the themes via the revamped « Appearances » Preference pane or the brand-new “Switch Color Theme” command that can be found via command search. The new command can be assigned to a custom keyboard shortcut within Sibelius Ultimate.

The color theme applies throughout the application, including the Ribbon, Quick Start, File / Backstage area, and all pop-up dialogs. We also have plans to soon extend the color theme to the score itself, creating a fully dark scoring environment. Stay tuned.

Please note: The new Appearance preference pane now houses the settings formerly found within the “Textures” pane. We’ve also added a simple “Restore Defaults” button to quickly get back to the default Desk and Paper colors (which work well with either color theme). If it’s been a while since you’ve updated your environment (e.g. a purple gradient?), we encourage you to explore the new options and customize your own color scheme.

Revamped Hi-Res Iconography (and a New Font on Mac!)

In addition to updating the colors throughout the Sibelius interface, we’ve also upgraded all icons to vector graphics to make them look even better on high-resolution displays. Stay tuned for more updates to icons as we continue to use your feedback to upgrade our designs.

Splash screen update

In our 2025.10 release, we completely overhauled the launch sequence by removing the dialog box that blocked Sibelius from running if a license was not detected. Now it launches directly into Sibelius First. It’s worth reminding that Sibelius First, Sibelius Artist, and Sibelius Ultimate are all the same application, and now the Sibelius splash screen reflects that. Now, on launch, you will see the following:

If Sibelius does unexpectedly launch into Sibelius First, it’s likely because a license needs to be synchronized within Avid Link. This can now be easily resolved by simply clicking the “Activate License” button in the status bar. Sibelius will then launch Avid Link to refresh your license and no further action or restart will be required.

Cross-Staff Beaming & Cross-Staff Bar Rests

This update also introduces valuable changes within your scores. The team has been working hard to address some of the long-standing issues surrounding cross-staff notation, and we intend to roll out a number of cross-staff notation improvements throughout the year, starting with this release.

You’ll find two new engraving rules within Sibelius 2026.2 to improve the default look of cross-staff notation, both of which are “on” by default in new scores (and “off” for existing scores to preserve their legacy look).

The first new engraving rule, “Hide bar rests,” will automatically hide the default bar rest when notes are crossed onto another staff. You still have full control over any notes or rests that you’d like to place on either staff when this new rule is on. However, for most use cases, this new engraving rule will be a significant time-saver.

The second new engraving rule is named “Avoid cross-staff beam corners by placing primary beam on the side of the first note.” Previously, there was no easy work-around for dealing with unwanted beam corners.

The image below shows the transformation that occurs when both of the new engraving rules are turned on.

Double Note Values for Two-Note Tremolos

The next new engraving rule can be found within the “Two-Note Tremolo” section of the Notes and Tremolos pane: “Double note values for whole notes and longer durations.” This option is “on” by default in new scores.

ManuScript Improvements

ManuScript, the Sibelius scripting language, continues to expand thanks to the many requests we receive from plug-in developers. We’ve added access for the new "custom ordering" of dynamic parts feature that was added in the 2025.12 release (i.e., Score.CustomParts). There is a new method to determine if the score is currently in page or panorama view (i.e., Score.GetCurrentScoreViewType). The stringnum variable of the “Note” class is now writable. And finally, we’ve fixed a few issues pertaining to transposing tab staves and restoring selections via ManuScript.

General Improvements and Bug Fixes

No release would be complete without a healthy collection of bug fixes. Here is a short list of the improvements that you can find in 2026.2:

• After an exhaustive effort, we located the cause of the most common Sibelius crash report: a crash after entering notes via a MIDI keyboard. Thank you to everyone who sent in their crash reports to help us locate this issue!
• Nudging notes via keyboard shortcuts once again works regardless of the user preference for "Respace multi-voice passages during note input and editing"
• Blank page text in a part no longer appears in the full score after the part has been deleted
• Sibelius now sorts the Playback Devices and Configurations lists alphabetically
• We've updated our Windows installer to safeguard against skipping the installation of a required file (which would subsequently lead to a crash)
• Lines and symbols are now drawn without a loss of quality within the Edit Symbols and Edit Lines dialogs (see below)

And that’s a wrap on the 2026.2 release! We hope that you’ll enjoy discovering the fresh new look of Sibelius in both light and dark color themes, as well as leaning into the engraving improvements and bug fixes.

As a reminder, if you have a perpetual license with an active Upgrade Plan or an active subscription, you can download the update now from your Avid account through the Products page. If you have an older version of Sibelius, you can upgrade to the latest version (via our new simplified upgrade process) through the Upgrade page.

If you’re new to music notation software or coming from another notation program, you can begin composing today with a completely free 30-day trial of Sibelius Ultimate. Visit the Sibelius homepage to get started, find resources, check out the latest innovative features, and explore everything Sibelius has to offer.