In an unfortunate turn of events for the jailbreak community, it seems that Apple will not be supporting the iPad (7th generation) with this year’s release of iPadOS 26, which means that the last remaining checkm8 bootrom exploit-vulnerable device will no longer receive major software updates this year and that checkm8-based jailbreaks will not be able to pwn iPadOS 26.
Apple seeded its first iOS & iPadOS 18.4 developer betas on Friday to set the groundwork for major upgrades in Apple Intelligence and other things. But as most jailbreakers already know, none of these firmware updates post-iOS 16.5.1 can be jailbroken on any arm64e (A12 and later) device.
While there isn’t yet a jailbreak for iOS & PadOS 17 or 18 on devices equipped with an A12 or newer chip, also commonly referred to as arm64e devices, the fact remains that the palera1n team still maintains the checkm8 bootrom exploit-powered jailbreak for the latest versions of iOS & iPadOS on devices equipped with A11 and older chips, also known as arm64 devices.
The iPad 7 is the lone device right now that sees any imminent potential for a jailbreak on iPadOS 18. That’s because this iPadOS 18 device is susceptible to the unpatchable hardware-based bootrom exploit, while no other checkm8 devices can run iOS or iPadOS 18.