Fedora 36 will be releasing this month. Fedora 36 beta is already released and it features the awesome new GNOME 42.
If you are running Fedora 35 right now and want to enjoy GNOME 42 and all the other features that come with Fedora 36, you can easily do that.
In this tutorial, I’ll show the steps for upgrading to Fedora 36 beta using terminal as well as the GUI method.
Keep in mind that you cannot downgrade to Fedora 35 the same way you upgraded to Fedora 36. You’ll have to reinstall it.
Upgrade to Fedora beta via command line
Unlike upgrading to beta version in Ubuntu, Fedora doesn’t need additional steps to exclusively mention that you are looking for a pre-release version upgrade. The steps are the same as upgrading to any Fedora stable version. Fedora presumes that you know what you are asking for.
With that information, it’s time to see the steps of the upgrade procedure.
The first step is to upgrade all the installed packages to the latest available version. Normally, it should not take long if you update your Fedora system regularly.
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
Then, install the system upgrade plugin for DNF. This will be quick.
sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
At this step, you should provide the number of version you are upgrading. In this case, you are looking to upgrade to Fedora 36, so instruct your system to download the release of Fedora 36 with releasever=36
.
The longest time will be taken by this step. Grab a cup of coffee or even go to lunch if you don’t have superfast internet.
sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=36
When this process completes, you need to reboot your system with this command to start the actual upgrade process:
sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot
You’ll see a dark screen with progress of your system upgrade:

Once the process completes, you’ll be logged in to Fedora 36 beta.
Upgrading to Fedora 36 beta graphically with GNOME Software Center (works only for GNOME desktop)
If you are using the GNOME desktop environment that comes with Fedora by default, you have the option to upgrade to the beta version graphically using the GNOME Software application.
Well … almost graphically. Because you’ll need to run this command in the terminal anyway:
gsettings set org.gnome.software show-upgrade-prerelease true
With that done, open the GNOME Software Center and go to the Updates tab. Make sure there are no pending updates to install. If there are any, install them.
If you don’t see the availability of the next release in the software center, you can either restart your system or kill any instance of GNOME Software with this command:
pkill gnome-software
Now start GNOME Software again and you should see the availability of the beta version of Fedora 36. Hit the download button and when that finishes, you’ll be prompted to install and restart your system.

What happens when the stable version of Fedora 36 is released?
You don’t have to do anything special to get the stable version if you are already using the beta version. Just keep your system updated and you’ll have the stable version automatically. That’s convenient, right?
I hope you find the steps to upgrade to Fedora 36 beta useful. If you have any questions, please do ask in the comment section.
Just something important if some one has problems with “sudo dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=36” use this “sudo dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=36 –skip-broken –allowerasing”
Thanks for the tip
Can I download the Beta DVD and use that as source (my home internet is slow, but I can download the Beta DVD from a friend’s house). Thanks. Great article!
Yes, sure you can do that. Get the ISO on USB/DVD from other system and install it on your system.
Thanks for the quick reply! When I boot the DVD, it wants me to select new root partition (maybe I missed “upgrade” option from DVD boot menu somewhere), whereas upgrade from UI on older install that is booted / running provides an “upgrade in place” on existing partition. I’ll try reboot again from DVD to see if there is an option to upgrade as opposed to just new install.
Tried it in command line… told me lilv (library for LV2) would not be upgradable. Suggest to add –skip-broken that did not change anything. dnf remove livl told me it is a bad idea because it would remove gnome-shell. I stopped there and decided to wait a few days.
Hmm… you did the right thing by stopping there
you can add the parameter –allowerasing so it can remove the packages that are no longer required, I did it and I was able to upgrade correctly. Always do backups in case you have to roll back