Fedora CoreOS 45 Test Week is underway, and there is still time to contribute. The Fedora community is accepting results through September 25 as it checks the next CoreOS release. Participants can test on a virtual machine or spare hardware, follow a published case, and report what worked or failed. This is a live testing event, not the release of Fedora CoreOS 45 to stable users.
Why Fedora CoreOS 45 needs testing now
Fedora CoreOS is designed for running container workloads with an automatically updated operating system. That makes an upgrade path just as important as a clean boot. A problem that appears only after a restart or a configuration change can matter greatly to teams running services at scale.
The Fedora CoreOS and QA teams invited community testing before Fedora 45 content enters the testing and stable streams. The current Fedora Test Days calendar lists the event for September 21–25, 2026. In other words, the window is open today. The Monday help session has already passed, but the test cases and results page remain available.
How readers can take part
Fedora asks volunteers to download the designated test images, run the documented checks, and enter results on the Test Day page. You do not need to maintain a production CoreOS fleet. A virtual machine can be enough for many cases, and the project also welcomes tests on bare metal. The official wiki lists x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x among the available architectures.
Keep test images away from production
Pre-release content can fail in unexpected ways. Use a disposable VM or a non-critical machine, keep any important data backed up, and read each test case before starting. The value of a test report is its detail. Include the image and platform used, the steps taken, and the result. A clear failure report can help maintainers reproduce a bug; a clear pass can build confidence in a change.
What this means for regular Fedora users
This test week is about Fedora CoreOS, not an instruction to move Fedora Workstation or a server to a beta today. People who use other Fedora editions can still follow the results. They reveal which parts of the upcoming release have received attention and where the team may need more evidence.
If you are exploring the wider distribution, see our Fedora coverage for related news and guides. The CoreOS event is a good example of how a distro gets shaped before a release: users test real workflows, report problems, and give maintainers time to act.
The September 25 deadline
There are two days left in the scheduled window. Pick one manageable case rather than trying to test everything. Then log the result, even if it is a pass. Fedora says contributions of any size help, and the results page gives the team a shared record. The final release should be judged on its own announcement; this week’s exercise is part of getting there.