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Unraid 2025 Year In Review

Unraid 2025 Year In Review

January 02, 2026

Unraid Digest 075

Happy New Year, Unraiders!

As we wrap up 2025, it’s time to look back at a truly historic year for Unraid. From the landmark launch of Unraid 7 to celebrating our 20th Anniversary as a product, this year has been defined by growth, innovation and continued incredible support from the friendliest OS community in the world. A huge thanks is in order to all of our Community Mods, Discord MVPs, Content Creators and Unraid Ambassadors for making this our most successful year yet.

Below is a recap of our major releases, company milestones, the top videos and community content of 2025 and more. Thank you for being part of this journey!

Unraid OS Releases in 2025

2025 was a transformational year for Unraid OS as our Unraid 7 series introduced major storage advancements, broader hardware and filesystem support, and a modern, API‑driven web interface—laying the groundwork for the next generation of Unraid.

Unraid 7.0: The Game Changer

7.0.0: This release introduced native ZFS support as a fully integrated filesystem, giving users the freedom to build systems entirely without the traditional Unraid array. Whether you're optimizing for all-NVMe storage or building high-throughput mirror pools, 7.0.0 enabled a new class of setups that blend performance with data integrity. Other major features included:
VM Snapshots and Cloning – Quickly duplicate and version virtual machines for dev/test workflows or rollback safety.
Built-In File Manager – Manage files directly from the webGUI without needing a separate machine or SSH.
Tailscale Integration – Remote access became easier and more secure than ever, thanks to built-in support for Tailscale.

Unraid 7.1: Enhanced Use Case Support & Polish

The 7.1 series expanded Unraid’s versatility across real-world scenarios—from home servers to advanced virtualized environments. It introduced wireless networking, native ZFS import capabilities, and key refinements to data safety and VM/network reliability.

Unraid 7.2: The API & Mobile Era

The 7.2 series delivered major usability wins and unlocked powerful new integration tools. From a fully responsive, mobile-friendly webGUI to RAIDZ expansion upgrades, this marked a turning point in how users interact with Unraid.

Major Announcements & Milestones

Unraid OS turned 20 years old and as a part of the celebration, we held a 20 Days of Unraid celebration, launched a new merch line, held our first live event, and held our biggest sale of the season to welcome even more new users into the ecosystem.
Show Us Your Server Competition: As part of the Unraid 20th Anniversary festivities, the community submitted some incredible hardware setups and home labs!
API Feature Bounty Program: We launched this initiative to empower our developer community to help shape the future of the Unraid API.
New Unraid Account: A revamped account system was introduced to provide a more streamlined and seamless license management experience.
New Unraid Docs: A completely re-written and organized docs experience to make all of the Unraid technical information easy to find and understand.
Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD): Reinforcing our commitment to security, we officially launched our CVD Policy this year.

Team Growth

Behind every Unraid release, feature, and support reply is a growing team focused on one thing: making Unraid better for the people who rely on it every day.

In 2025, we invested heavily in our people, our processes, and our culture so we can continue to scale without losing what makes Unraid special. Today, we’re a team of 16 full-time staff and a handful of dedicated contractors across 7 countries, giving us broader coverage across time zones, faster support responses, and more focused development across the OS, documentation, and community experience.

This growth isn’t about headcount for its own sake—it’s about delivering a more reliable, polished, and feature-rich platform for our users. In 2025 we made the following hires:

Candice Elliott: After years of working alongside Unraid, Candice officially joined the team as our first-ever VP of People & Culture. Working in close partnership with our CEO, Tiffany, Candice is helping shape the kind of workplace we’ve always believed in—fair, inclusive, transparent, generous, and fun.
Edward Rawlings (Spaceinvader One), transitioned to a full-time role at Lime Technology splitting efforts between marketing and support. This means more epic video guides, interviews, and new features for everyone!
Andrew Zawadzki transitioned into a full-time role, strengthening Community Applications support, features and security into 2026 and beyond. Keep an eye out for a CA glow up in 2026!
Chris Tram joined the Cloud team in July and was hired to work on the API, improving license management and account reliability.
Christian Montenegro joined in December as a Marketing Specialist, contributing design and marketing expertise to enhance how Unraid connects, communicates, and looks across all touchpoints.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to welcome Simon Fairweather full-time to the OS team in January 2026 and to hire a Technical Product Manager, further strengthening our ability to turn community feedback into shipped features.

For Unraid users, this means faster support, clearer communication, more consistent OS updates and documentation, better long-term stability and planning, and a team built to support Unraid not just today, but for years to come.

Looking Ahead to 2026

As we head into 2026, our focus is simple: listen closely, build thoughtfully, and ship improvements that make Unraid even more powerful and reliable for your everyday life.

You’ll soon receive an Unraid Customer Survey, and we genuinely hope you take a few minutes to share your feedback. Your input directly shapes our roadmap and helps us prioritize what matters most to you.

What’s coming in 2026

We have an ambitious year ahead, with continued investment across core OS features, developer tooling, and overall usability, including:

Internal Boot
The ability to boot Unraid from non-USB flash storage, providing more flexibility, reliability, and modern deployment options.
Multiple Arrays
Expanded storage configuration capabilities to support more advanced and diverse use cases.
Open-Source Unraid API Improvements
Ongoing enhancements to the Unraid API, enabling deeper integrations, better tooling, and more community-driven innovation.
WebGUI Enhancements
Modernization and continued refinements to the Unraid web interface to improve performance, clarity, and usability.
Public Bug/Feature Tracker
Greater transparency into known issues, fixes, and development progress.
And that’s just the beginning — there’s much more in the works as we continue to modernize Unraid while staying true to the flexibility and control that our community values. Thank you for helping shape what comes next. 2026 is going to be a big year for Unraid, and we’re excited to build it together.

Best of the Uncast Show

2025 was a record-breaking year for Unraid content, and The Uncast Show continued to grow into a core resource for the community. This year, the channel surpassed 10,000 subscribers, reached 686,000 views, and logged over 76,000 watch hours — reflecting strong demand for practical guides, real-world builds, and transparent conversations about Unraid. Key episodes from 2025 included:

Behind the Code: The 20-Year Journey of Unraid

The Ultimate Jellyfin Guide | Full Walkthrough + Tips for 2025

Travel Smarter with a Travel Router

The Ultimate Energy-Efficient Unraid Server Build

Blog: The Ultimate Energy-Efficient Unraid Server Build was a deep dive blog into building the most power-efficient Unraid server was one of our most popular guides this year.