The first iOS 26.2 beta came out in early November, followed by beta 2 a couple of weeks later. Things have now progressed past the beta stage and Apple is seeding the second release candidate for iOS 26.2 (the first one came out a week ago).
It has a build number 23C54. By the way, beta 2 had issues with AirDrop, which are now fixed. That said, there are still a number of known issues, so it’s best to hold off until the official rollout of iOS 26.2.
A release candidate is what it sounds like – it’s the last step before a piece of software starts to roll out to consumers. With that in mind, we should see stable iOS 26.2 soon, in the next few days even.
Looking to the future, iOS 27 will focus on performance improvements and AI.