The 2026-07 integrated release is now available on the new Ensembl!

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This Integrated release, named “2026-07”, includes data from all partial releases on the new site up to July 2026. It serves as an interoperable dataset linking genomes across the site. This integrated release also fixes these data to this time point, making them suitable for long-term use.  

As part of the transition to the new Ensembl platform, the 2026-07 release has integrated the latest genesets from the Ensembl 116 and Ensembl Genomes 63 releases.

This is a marker release to start the transition to the new Ensembl site. We will begin updating the Ensembl URLs from 10 August through 10 September 2026.

Genomes available:

There are 8,185 genomes now available on the site. 

  • 4577 Animals
  • 110 Archaea
  • 2423 Bacteria
  • 388 Fungi
  • 550 Green Plants
  • 137 Others

New features and tools 

Alignments viewer: 

The new Alignments viewer tool allows you to explore genomic variation, including complex structural variants, in the context of genes and sequence alignments between two assemblies. You can compare a selected number of human haplotypes to either the GRCh38 or T2T-CHM13 assemblies. 

Ensembl GraphQL and RefGet: 

The latest genome data is programmatically accessible via Ensembl GraphQL, and sequences can be accessed using Ensembl refget.

Comparative genomics (Compara) 

Out of the 25952 genomes featured in integrated release 2026_07, homologies were calculated against reference genome sets using the reciprocal best BLAST hit approach for 5171 genomes.

Regulatory annotation:

This release provides regulatory annotation of promoters and enhancers across 10 species, including human (GRCh38) and mouse (GRCm39), livestock (cattle, pig, and chicken), and aquaculture species (Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, common carp, turbot and European seabass).

Plants

We have expanded our wheat pangenome to 24 genomes, including new Paragon (EI_Triticum_aestivum_paragon_v3, GCA_949126075.2) and Cadenza (EI_Triticum_aestivum_cadenza_v2, GCA_965120215.1) cultivars.

Microbes

We have integrated over 2400 bacterial genomes, with representatives across major phyla. We expect thousands more genomes to be migrated over autumn 2026. 

Other updates and changes

Due to updates in data structures, the previous integrated release “2025-02” has been removed from the live site. The majority of genome data from this release is available from previous Ensembl versions or the Rapid Release Archive. Genome data is available for download from the new FTP site – https://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/ensemblorganisms/