In order to provide its users with the most stability and security, Ubuntu has used an LTS version of openssl for its own LTS releases. It has therefore remained on openssl 3.0.
Now that Noble is released and considering that another openssl LTS version is planned before 2026, we can update again.
Oracular will soon see openssl 3.2 and hopefully 3.3 while 25.04 should see 3.4. We will continue updating until reaching the next openssl LTS version, at which point we will stick with it in order to offer again an openssl LTS version on the next Ubuntu LTS.
PS: please keep in mind that these is the general plan. Release plans and schedules of various packages can change and it is impossible to make previsions for 2026 at this point.
Isn’t the point that 25.04 trials things coming in the next LTS? Or is your point that the next LTS can still bump the version without 25.04 doing so?
The latter, this is also rather uncontroversial and the revisions will move forward anyway with the next two Ubuntu releases as you can see in the pre-last paragraph of the OP…
This isn’t like a re-implementation of core-utils or sudo in rust where we might have to roll back before the LTS last minute because massive incompatibilities were found, it is just a well known package doing its regular “move forward” thing.
OpenSSL 3.5 was released on April 5th. Feature Freeze for 25.04 (as documented on the release schedule was February 20th. We didn’t choose 3.4 over 3.5 because at the time the choice had to be made, 3.5 didn’t exist.