What’s new in Sibelius May 2026

Our team is pleased to announce the second major Sibelius release of 2026. This version contains long-awaited support for VST3® plugins, a radical new way to share parts to any web browser, new enhancements for controlling the visibility of bar rests and multirests, improvements to dark theme, and a number of highly requested fixes. Let’s dig in and explore all that is new in Sibelius 2026.5.

VST3

At long last, Sibelius 2026.5 introduces support for VST3 plugins! When you click to open your Playback Devices dialog, you will now automatically see any VST3 plugins that are available on your machine. Just like VST2 plugins, VST3 plugins are scanned and cached the first time that they are loaded, so if you have a lot of VST3 plugins on your machine, your first launch of Sibelius 2026.5 may be slower than usual. Our team is excited to hear what you make with this long-requested feature.

Sibelius Cloud Sharing Parts

This release contains a milestone change for Sibelius Cloud Sharing by giving users the ability to view all parts and subsets within the web viewer. From the Cloud Sharing Dashboard (Home → Cloud Sharing), there are new options to specify exactly what you’d like to share from your file: Full Score, Score Subsets, and/or Parts.

Please note that these new options are only available within Sibelius Ultimate.

By default, Score Subsets and Parts are not shared. If you’d like to pass Parts and Subsets electronically to your ensembles, open the dashboard and turn on the new options as needed.

When sharing Score Subsets or Parts, the Sibelius Cloud web viewer will reveal a new button in the toolbar to access a list of all Parts and Subsets in the file. Simply click to open the available list of views and click on the Part or Subset that you’d like to see in your browser.

Please note that the list of Subsets and Parts follows the new “Custom Ordering” introduced in a previous release (2026.2). Playback within the web viewer matches the current view, so if you’re viewing a part, you’ll only hear that part during playback.

In addition to providing a dedicated URL for each shared score, Sibelius will now also generate a custom QR code for your score, which makes it easy to quickly share a Sibelius score with anyone who has access to a web browser.

QR codes can be found via the Sharing Options (next to the Print icon) in each viewer. Once generated, anyone who scans the QR code will be able to quickly locate, listen to, and play their parts.

While sharing Subsets and Parts via Sibelius Cloud Sharing is an exciting new feature, the real magic occurs when changes need to be pushed. Use the “Push” button within Sibelius (Home → Cloud Sharing → Push) to notify all viewers that the score has been updated and it’s time to refresh the browser to see the latest updates. This is a powerful new way to work with large ensembles for both rehearsals and performances.

Bar Rest improvements

We’ve made meaningful improvements to bar rests in Sibelius 2026.5. The first change is that bar rests in otherwise empty bars can be hidden with a single “hide” operation. In versions since 2023.5, this workflow involved hiding bar rests twice, which is no longer necessary in most cases.

The second change pertains to “showing” bar rests that have been hidden via the “Show Bar Rests” engraving rule. It is now possible to manually override that engraving rule by selecting a hidden bar rest and triggering the “Show / Hide” command. This level of control was requested by several new users coming from Finale, and we’re happy to deliver it in Sibelius.

The last bar rest change is a fix for a situation in which hiding a bar rest in the Full Score could sometimes cause a related multirest in a part to disappear. Multirest visibility is now considered separately from the parent bar rests in these situations.

Dark theme

We’ve been hard at work addressing dark theme issues that were reported in the 2026.2 release. Here are a few of the highlights:

• More color contrast has been added to the open view tabs
• Scroll bar colors have been restored on Mac
• The Plugin Trace window no longer has dark theme issues on Windows
• Quick Start Controls have received better dark theme styling
• Licensing dialogs now properly invert into dark theme
• Dark theme “sort” arrow icons have been added to tables within dialogs on Windows

We’re grateful to everyone who sent in their requests for color changes and icon tweaks after our extensive overhaul in the 2026.2 release. We still have more improvements to share in our next few releases, so please keep the feedback coming.

Other fixes / improvements:

Last but not least, here are more improvements and fixes that are new to the 2026.5 build (some of which were long-standing requests):

• The Edit All Fonts -> Main Text Font dropdown box now simply configures the font for the "Plain Text" text style
• Objects that go off the printed page are now fully selectable, allowing them to be dragged back onto the score
• Plugin dialog button widths no longer overlap on Windows
• Sibelius First and Artist no longer have an extra thumbnail in Quick Start after dismissing the tier limitation pop-up
• The Playback Configuration is no longer missing the FixedProgramList when using a manual sound set
• The Tiling function command names are no longer reversed on the ribbon in the View tab
• Automatically hidden cross-staff bar rests are now reported as "hidden" to screen readers
• Screen reader tabbing no longer takes users from Playback Devices back to the score
• After triggering the “Repeat” selection command, Sibelius now properly selects all notes within a chord
• The licensing action button now appears in the status bar when the warning icon is visible (previously it only appeared when the license was fully deactivated)
• Playback configurations in the Backstage Export and Playback Configurations dialogs are now sorted alphabetically
• Imported MusicXML files can now be shared via Sibelius Cloud Sharing more reliably
• Copying notes to a TAB staff no longer leaves out certain notes
• Our most frequent crash reports are now fixed, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send us those reports. (We really do read them!)

And that’s all for 2026.5! The entire Sibelius team is already about halfway through the production of our next release, which will continue on the theme of addressing a number of long-standing customer requests.

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 through the Upgrade page. If you’re coming to Sibelius from Finale or Dorico, we have a deal for you! Check it out: Sibelius Crossgrade Offering.

New to Sibelius? Start composing today with a 30-day trial for Sibelius Ultimate. Visit the Sibelius homepage to start and find resources, check out the latest innovative features, and explore everything Sibelius has to offer.

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