Intel NPU Driver 1.38.0 Adds Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Support and Major Kernel 7.0 Upgrade
Intel NPU Driver v1.38.0 has landed on the official repository, bringing first-class Ubuntu 26.04 LTS certification and kernel 7.0.0-31-generic support to every current NPU platform, including Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, Panther Lake, and Wildcat Lake. The release upgrades Level Zero to v1.32.0, OpenVINO to 2026.3.1, and the bundled NPU compiler to UD2026.38, while UMD test results confirm zero failures across all silicon generations. Newer hardware like Lunar Lake and Wildcat Lake cleared 98 percent of the extended workload, whereas the older Meteor and Arrow Lake platforms sat slightly behind at 83 percent. You can grab the distribution-specific tarballs directly from the GitHub release page, though you will need to purge the old intel-fw-npu packages and add libtbb12 to your system before running the install.
Intel NPU Driver 1.38.0 Adds Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Support and Major Kernel 7.0 Upgrade
Intel has released NPU Driver v1.38.0, which adds support for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and upgrades to kernel 7.0.0-31-generic across various NPU platforms, including Lunar Lake and Wildcat Lake. The update includes significant enhancements such as Level Zero v1.32.0 and OpenVINO v2026.3.1, with testing showing zero failures across all silicon generations. While the newer hardware achieved a pass rate of 98%, older platforms like Meteor and Arrow Lake lagged at 83% in extended workload tests. Users can download the driver from GitHub, but must first remove older packages and install necessary dependencies before proceeding with the installation
