LibreOffice continues to enjoy strong demand following the release of version 26.8 in August. According to new figures from The Document Foundation, the open-source office suite recorded 9.4 million downloads over eight weeks, from August 24 to October 18, averaging more than one million downloads per week.
Even more impressive, LibreOffice’s total downloads for 2026 have already surpassed the entire 2025 figure, with ten weeks still remaining in the year.
The latest numbers follow the record-breaking first week of LibreOffice 26.8, which saw 1,031,162 downloads shortly after release. Before the announcement, weekly downloads were slightly below one million but have remained above since.
And those 9.4 million downloads don’t tell the whole story. TDF explains that Windows updates are counted separately, as are downloads of older LibreOffice versions, which also continue to attract considerable interest.
To provide a broader picture, the foundation shared website traffic statistics for the same period. The main download website recorded 11.4 million visits, the Windows update website received about 90 million visits, and the site serving older LibreOffice releases registered nearly 39.7 million visits.
Of course, these figures represent website visits rather than actual downloads or installations, so they shouldn’t be added to the reported 9.4 million total.
As for what’s driving the growth, TDF acknowledges that it cannot provide a definitive answer. Since LibreOffice downloads are anonymous, the organization has no reliable way to determine exactly why more people are choosing the software.
“We like to think that the consistency of the LibreOffice project – which has been championing the concept of digital sovereignty and standard document formats for years – and the robustness of the software, which has never sought to be a clone of the most widely used office suite on the market but has always strived to forge its own path, are two very important factors that, in the long term, represent a significant advantage over all other products.”
Whatever the reasons, the numbers are impressive. This suggests interest in LibreOffice remains strong well after the initial excitement around version 26.8. And with more than two months left in 2026, the project is on track to finish the year with substantially more downloads than in 2025.
I guess the current situation with Ai driven recompilation / decompilation of certain other proprietary software made headlines, where people compare it to or recommend complete Open Source projects instead. Maybe that brought up LibreOffice a lot and is the reason for the current spike of interest. It could be unrelated to that, but I don't see anything else that could possible explain it.
Well, there is also the thing about the US becoming an increasingly unreliable trading partner for the EU. There have been frequent news about military organizations and city administrations switching away from Microsoft Office over the past months.
In particular, the International Criminal Court was hit directly with sanctions last year, where Microsoft was required to block their chief prosecutor from accessing his e-mail account: https://cybernews.com/tech/icc-replacing-microsoft-workplace-software-opendesk/
The ICC has since started switching away from Microsoft Office. And just two weeks ago, they were hit again but with much worse sanctions: https://apnews.com/article/us-icc-trump-rubio-4ea3555403e3c695d8f81dc473515d9b
I could imagine that this brought a lot of attention back to the Microsoft Office dependency of other organizations, too.
If only there was some way we could know what TDF think is the reason. It would be amazing to see what they said, word for word, because of course they're best placed to understand their market. What a shame that seems unknowable.