System76 plans for COSMIC include Vulkan, HDR, gaming improvements and more

System76 have outlined some of their plans for upcoming upgrades to the new COSMIC desktop, and I have to admit I'm quite excited about what's coming to it. Right now COSMIC is pretty good, but there's a fair amount of work needed to get it up to the level of the likes of GNOME and KDE Plasma and it seems the gaps are going to be filled quite rapidly.

They've split COSMIC upgrades into "Epochs", which have a period of development over six to eight months. In a new blog post they've noted a whole lot planned for COSMIC Epoch 2 and gaming is a clear focus for it, as there appears to be a number of clear issues spread across their GitHub pages (#1, #2) so hopefully Epoch 2 will make COSMIC a great place for gaming on Linux.

Some of the other highlights coming for Epoch 2 include:

• Vulkan renderer.
• Live / dynamic wallpapers.
• A Firmware manager.
• More accessibility work like keyboard navigation for Panels and Applets.
• COSMIC screenshot tool to include video recording, markup tools etc.
• Support for the File Transfer portal with Flatpaks.
• Various big performance improvements
• Wacom tablet support.
• + lots more.

I quite like their experimentation with a frosted glass effect for the COSMIC UI, which is coming as part of Epoch 2, that CEO and Founder Carl Richell posted about on Bluesky with a few example shots:

Further out is COSMIC Epoch 3, which would then likely be next year, with plans to include the likes of:

• HDR support.
• Night Light.
• Gamepad / controller support.
• Notification improvements.
• Plenty of accessibility work like cursor sizing, mobility options and more.
• Improvements to their audio player.
• Upgrades to their COSMIC app store.

Seems like 2026 and beyond is going to be very interesting for System76 COSMIC.