Apple's annual developer conference is less than three months away, and the rumor mill is turning at full speed. Between several sources, most notably Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, we've got a pretty clear picture of what to expect when Tim Cook takes the stage in June.
Of course, Apple is still capable of some surprises. (Last week's AirPods Max 2 launch came out of nowhere, for instance.) With that in mind, here's what we know about the annual iOS-focused event.
When is WWDC 2026?
Apple hasn't officially announced WWDC 2026 yet, but history is a reliable guide here. From past years, Apple typically announces the event in late March, and the conference itself lands in the first or second week of June — almost without fail. Based on that pattern, some sites like 9to5Mac expect WWDC 2026 to run from June 8–12, with the keynote kicking things off on Monday, June 8.
iOS 27
In November 2025, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman broke the news that iOS 27 is being positioned internally as Apple's "Snow Leopard" moment — a callback to the 2009 Mac OS X release that famously ran a "no new features" marketing campaign that laid the groundwork for every update since.
As Gurman described it, Apple's engineering teams are "combing through Apple's operating systems, hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate, and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality." The motivation isn't hard to understand. Since the release of iOS 26, users have reported a lengthy list of grievances, including device overheating and unexplained battery drain, as well as UI glitches, keyboard failures, and sluggish animations.
According to Gurman, iOS 27 is also meant to prepare Apple's software stack for its foldable iPhone. Other than that, expect to see new refreshes for watchOS, tvOS, macOS, visionOS, and iPadOS.
Siri is finally getting a real upgrade (no, really this time)
The long-promised overhaul to Siri — the one Apple has been teasing and delaying since the early Apple Intelligence announcements — is expected to be front and center at WWDC 2026. AppleInsider reported that the update, codenamed "Campo" internally, will give Siri an interface closer to what you'd expect from ChatGPT or Claude. It's a more conversational, chatbot-style experience that Apple has been quietly building toward.
According to AppleInsider, a deal struck earlier this year will see Apple incorporate Google's Gemini models into its Apple Foundation Models framework. It was a deal worth $1 billion per year, and its comparatively small change given Apple's existing $20 billion annual arrangement with Google for default search placement.
Beyond the Siri overhaul, Gurman reported that Apple is weaving AI into additional apps throughout iOS 27. The most intriguing addition: a health-focused AI agent tied to a Health+ subscription, expected to arrive next fall. There's also reportedly an expansion of Apple's AI-powered web search, which Apple is positioning as a direct competitor to both ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Gurman also revealed that Apple has been internally testing a full chatbot app called Veritas, which is described as a text-based proving ground for the re-architected Siri. Apple reportedly has no plans to release Veritas as a standalone product.
The Tim Cook situation
No WWDC preview would be complete without a word on Apple's leadership. A Financial Times report from November 2025 claimed Cook was poised to step down between late January and June 2026. That window has now passed without incident, and Gurman — who has been tracking Apple's succession planning closely — called the FT's specific timeline "simply false."
Gurman's broader read from his newsletter is that Cook "still loves the job," succession planning is ongoing with John Ternus (SVP of Hardware Engineering) as the leading internal candidate, but an imminent departure is not in the cards. When Cook does eventually step down, he's expected to remain as board chairman. So don't expect any dramatic announcements from the WWDC stage this June.
