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.
Been using Libre and open office before that since the first open source release. Kind of a power user, calc did things I needed before Excel did in many cases.
As of today my only issue is that Libre Office uses its own drawing and rendering (as I understand it) and I have issues with multi monitor resolution. Works fine on main screen, move it to another and rendering all huge and useless.
Probably the only application i have issues with using multi monitor multi resolution on Wayland.
Yes, LibreOffice uses its own custom rendering engine and that’s not the most performant…
But you have to understand that before LibreOffice there was OpenOffice.org, which itself comes from an old German application called StarOffice.
And oh boy, StarOffice! It was quite peculiar: it used to render its own desktop environment that took over Windows Explorer, with its own Start menu!
So, let’s all remember that LibreOffice still has that legacy to carry on.
Does this count include people running Linux whose copy of Libre Office comes from their distro repository?
Because if not, then there’s those too in addition to these downloads.
Been using LibreOffice for at least a decade now, OpenOffice before that and I’ve always been satisfied. I’m not a power user but for the 2 spreadsheets I make a month it works great.
Started with OpenOffice and then LibreOffice. Not a power user but I’ve been using it for close to 20 years, and no complains. For the vast majority of the users, it will do the job. No need to waste money on other stuff.
I just install libreoffice last week! So far work great!
I’ve been using OnlyOffice for a while now but I don’t really trust them because of their AI integration and awful plugins. How good is LibreOffice compared to OnlyOffice? Is the UI still awful? Did the devs said anything about AI?
LibreOffice has more advanced tools than OnlyOffice.
The UI appreciation is a matter of taste but this last release made some progress about it.
The devs have an anti-AI stance.
