What’s New in Sibelius September 2026
Joe Plazak (Sibelius Senior Principal Product Manager) & Kit Soden (Sibelius Product Designer)
The team is pleased to announce that our fifth release of 2026, Sibelius 2026.9, is now available on Windows, Mac, iOS, and AndroidTM devices.
In this release, we’ve added a whole new level of customizability to three specific notation engraving areas: tie height, tremolo positioning, and cross-staff voice positioning. We’ve also added new commands, added official support for Apple’s latest operating systems (macOS 27 and iOS 27), and fixed a significant number of priority issues raised by the community. Let’s dig in and unpack everything you can find in Sibelius 2026.9.
Tie Height Customization
If you’ve ever found the default tie shape in Sibelius to be too round or too flat, it’s now easy to quickly change the look of all the ties in your score. Matching the functionality of slurs, Sibelius now allows the height of ties to be set globally via dedicated engraving rules. There are new options to easily scale tie height as a percentage of the legacy default shape. In addition to scaling tie heights to be flatter or rounder, there is a new option to limit the height for long ties (much like the same legacy setting for slurs).
Note: Changing the tie height scaling engraving rule will not affect the height of any tie that has already been manually adjusted (via dragging the middle tie handle or setting the height in the Inspector). However, changing the height limit of long ties will apply to all ties in the score.
It’s important to note that it’s still possible to open Sibelius 2026.9 scores in previous versions. However, ties will not retain their height scaling in versions before 2026.9. If you use Sibelius through a perpetual license and haven’t recently updated your software to the latest version, you can find all of the details for doing so on our dedicated Upgrade page.
Tremolo Position Customizations
Tremolo stroke lines and note stem lengths are now independent! The relative positioning between tremolo strokes (for both single and double note tremolos) and the tip of the stem can now be customized. This customization also extends to buzz rolls. For cases where tremolo lines might obscure ledger lines or where spacing might be tight and extending/retracting the stem length isn’t desirable, it’s now possible to adjust tremolo stroke positioning via mouse drags, edits in the Inspector dialog, or via standard keyboard shortcuts for adjusting item handles.
Cross-staff Voice Position Rules
Following updates on cross-staff beaming (2026.2), cross-staff accidentals (2026.6), and cross-staff ties (2026.8), we've turned our focus to voice positioning. Until now, cross-staff notes would collide with other notes sharing the same stave and position. Via a new “Notes and Tremolos” engraving rule: "Apply voice position rules to cross-staff notes," Sibelius can now extend voice-positioning logic to cross-staff notes. This means that noteheads, stems, beams, accidentals, and dots no longer overlap or merge with other voices at the same location.
Note: This new engraving rule is enabled by default in new scores and disabled by default for legacy scores to preserve existing customizations.
macOS 27, iOS 27, iPadOS 27
The team has tested the latest operating systems from Apple across all of our applications, and we’re happy to share that we’ve qualified Sibelius to run properly on the macOS 27, iOS 27, and iPadOS 27. The team is also excited to start working on the forthcoming iPhone Duo! Stay tuned for more news on what this exciting device might mean for your mobile notation workflows.
New Commands
You’ll find a few new commands in Sibelius 2026.9, including one that has been requested for a long time: Audio Engine Options (commandID: audio_engine_options). You can use this command via Command Search or a custom keyboard shortcut to directly access the Sibelius audio input/output settings. Other new commands include:
- Toggle Metronome On/Off [CommandID: toggle_metronome_on_off]
- Change Order of Parts [CommandID: change_order_parts], which allows quick access to the “Change order of parts and subsets” dialog.
Other Fixes & Improvements
As with every release, we’ve been collecting your feedback and addressing the issues that most affect your workflows. Here are the critical fixes and improvements that we’ve added in Sibelius 2026.9:
- Fixed: Sibelius now correctly adds/removes space for accidentals when transposing a mixture of cross-staff and non-cross-staff notes
- Fixed: A case where cross-staff natural accidentals were being suppressed in certain layouts
- Fixed: The Respell command and chromatic pitch changes (Shift + Page Up/Down), now correctly trigger respacing for both regular and cross-staff notes
- Fixed: Voice 2 whole rests now copy and paste correctly (a long-standing issue)
- Fixed: A crash that could occur when creating a completely blank worksheet via the Worksheet Creator
- Fixed: A crash on load that affected a single score
- Fixed: Rhythmic dots can now be added to passages that start with rests (rather than failing silently)
- Fixed: Auto-optimize no longer adds too much vertical space for cross-stave notes with articulations
- Addressed: Within the ManuScript Language, we addressed a legacy issue with the Sibelius.ActiveScore method that could potentially result in a silent failure
And that wraps up the 2026.9 release! We hope that you’ll make the most of these long-requested improvements, and as ever: there is more to come!
Future releases will continue leaning into engraving improvements, bug fixes, and workflow refinements to help you create without distractions, so stay tuned for more improvements in 2026.
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 the Upgrade page.
If you’re new to music notation software or coming from another notation program, you can begin composing today with a free 30-day trial of Sibelius Ultimate. Visit the Sibelius homepage to get started, find resources, check out the latest creative features, and explore everything Sibelius has to offer.