The next major Mac Studio update is still a few years away, but a 2026 refresh is still on the cards, according to BloombergIt’s Mark Gurman.
Writing in the latest edition of its Power On newsletter, Gurman said Apple has two Mac Studio refreshes in the works: an M5 Ultra version due this year and a larger M7 Ultra model expected in 2028.
Apple appears ready to ignore the high-end M6 chips altogether, hence the two-year gap between the two models. Gurman reported earlier this month that Apple was canceling its high-end M6 Pro and M6 Max chips, instead releasing a base M6 this year and moving its upcoming Pro and Max silicon to the M7 line, which is expected to rely heavily on on-device AI and GPU-intensive workloads.
Apple has always had at least three variants of its in-house silicon, including the base M-series chip, a Pro version, and a Max version. The M6 will mark the first time that Apple will not offer a Pro or Max chip for the line.
For Mac Studio, this means going straight from the M5 Ultra to the M7 Ultra – there will be no M6 Ultra in between. Although a major redesign is not expected for this year’s M5 Ultra model, Gurman says Apple has developed a new internal architecture for the Mac Studio 2028, including a better heatsink to improve thermal performance.
The Mac Studio refresh was supposed to come earlier in 2026, but Apple reportedly postponed the launch due to memory chip supply issues and price increases. Apple is reportedly testing support for up to 768GB of unified memory, but supply constraints may prevent it from launching with an option for that much memory.
It’s still unclear whether Apple will launch the M5 version in October, especially since the current M3 Ultra Mac Studio still has delivery estimates extending into October.
