26.0.0-alpha.1 (2026-11-13)

Bug Fixes

• deprecation: address DEP0169 (4598346)
• deprecation: address DEP0169 (#4320) (00fa2b1)
• deps: upgrade to the new beta of the npm plugin (6332386)
• deps: upgrade to the new beta of the npm plugin (#4319) (c46a061)
• release: trigger (76fa7c6)

chore

• ci: update Node.js engine version and test matrix (#4269) (39b1ea6)

Features

• implement tags push in verifyAuth dry-run operation and isolate branch status check (#3447) (3e2a071), closes #3437
• node-versions: drop support for node versions before the promotion of v26 to LTS (f20d711)

BREAKING CHANGES

• node-versions: a minimum of node v26.13.0 is required. find our configuration recommentation at
  https://semantic-release.org/support/node-version/#run-at-least-one-ci-job-with-a-version-of-node-that-meets-our-version-requirement
• deps: the npm cli is upgraded to v12. find details about
  breaking changes at https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v12.0.0
• deps: the npm cli is upgraded to v12. find details about
  breaking changes at https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v12.0.0
• semantic-release now checks if your local branch is
  up-to-date with your remote repo branch after of push permission
  verification.
• ci: Now require Node.js ^22.22.2 or >=24.15