Are you ready, Awesome Admins? It’s almost time for the Winter ’26 Salesforce Release!
An essential part of every admin’s job is staying on top of the latest Salesforce Releases. Three times a year, Salesforce releases new features and updates to our technology, enabling users everywhere to take advantage of the latest and greatest that our platform has to offer! As an Awesome Admin, getting the benefits from these releases is made even easier by knowing the basics and best practices.
Below are the most important dates you’ll want to mark in your calendar for Winter ’26.
Admins can sign up for a pre-release Developer Edition environment which is full of all the Winter ’26 features to explore to your heart’s content. Developer environments are stand-alone environments where you can learn, build, and get comfortable with features and functionality. If you already had a pre-release org for Summer ’25, you’ll be able to log back into that one.
Search the products you use for release updates in the Release Notes section of Salesforce Help. The notes are available now.
Get help from the community! With each release, there are a number of blogs by community members who break it down. Check out the Release Readiness Trailblazer Community Group where you can continue to get updates, share your favorite features, and ask questions about the upcoming release.
Once you’ve explored the pre-release org and reviewed the Release Notes for features that are important to you, it’s time to try out features related to your customizations in your sandbox. This is a great time to evaluate how specific features may be useful or impact the way your organization uses Salesforce.
During each release, there is a group of sandboxes slated to remain on the non-preview instance (i.e. the current release) while there is another group of sandboxes that will upgrade to the preview instance.
Use the Salesforce Sandbox Preview Guide to determine the plan for your sandbox instance(s). Below are screenshots of the tool where you can search by sandbox instance and then specify what you want to do with your sandbox — stay on the non-preview or move to preview. It will then instruct you to refresh your sandbox to get to the desired instance or inform you that there is no action needed because your sandbox is slated for the desired instance.
If you want to learn more about this process and why you should be on a sandbox preview, take the Get Early Access with the Sandbox Preview Trailhead module.
If your sandbox is not slated to be updated to preview, take action before 5 p.m. Pacific Time on September 4th to get early access to all the Winter ’26 features in one of your sandboxes. Check out this Help Article for instructions on exactly how and when to refresh your sandbox.
Check your sandbox instance on Trust for your sandbox upgrade window. Just like the pre-release org, sandbox preview gives you the opportunity to test new features against your own customizations without affecting your live environment.
Now is a good time to check out Release Updates in Setup. This is where you go to review and activate release updates to improve org performance, security, business logic, and usability. See which items need your action, which updates are due soon or overdue, as well as updates that have been archived.
Our product management team is back to discuss and demo the new features for each cloud. Get a sneak peek into their 2026 roadmap.
We’ll begin sharing features in Admin Evangelist Jen’s Release Blog, a post on the Admin Blog highlighting the top features you need to know to Be Release Ready with Winter ’26 features.
As blog posts and more release resources become available, we’ll be updating the Be Release Ready page with all the resources and information you need to get started with Winter ’26.
Check the Maintenance Calendar for exactly when your Salesforce org will get the Winter ’26 features. Scroll through the list and check your Salesforce instance (NA__, EMEA__) against the release dates listed in the calendar. Once the release window has passed for your environment, you’ll have access to the newest features in your production environment!
Check out the Be Release Ready page for all the resources you need to help prepare your org and users for the Winter ’26 release, and take a look at the related Agentforce innovations.
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