Ancestry 2026 update

[FoundAUserNameDownTheSofa]

Anyone else interested to see what it will be? I think I saw it will be released on 8 Oct. Lots of new regional/ ethnic splits apparently, but more so in African, Asian and indigenous American.

I’m hoping they change the southeast England and northeastern Europe region. They added that in last time and it doesn’t make sense to me - they manage to split out the Netherlands but can’t split southeastern England from northern France and Belgium!

I’ve seen a graphic that looks like they will be splitting out southern Scotland from Northern Ireland. My southwest Scotland ancestors were regularly marrying people from Northern Ireland so not sure how accurate that will be.

And I’m guessing i’ll lose the 1% Breton they added last time.

Should be interesting.
Hoping a German link comes up for dh. Otherwise his 3xgreat grandfather wasn’t his 3xgreat grandfather.

That could be a distant enough ancestor that it doesn’t show up though? If we inherited evenly we’d be 3% of each 3x great grandparent I think, that’s easily lost within the randomness of what genes get passed on.

Particularly if the German ancestor wasn’t 100% German or was from an area that was close to another country/ changing borders.

Thank you for clarifying it @FoundAUserNameDownTheSofa
He’ll be glad to hear that .

My dad always said we were descended from an Indian princess 😂but I never found her in the records! I did find a 5x ggrandfather who was a sailor who died in India in the 1760s, and he'd had children with a woman named Mary, but there was no evidence she was Indian.

Then when I had my dna tested, I had a miniscule (0 to 1%) bit of Indian dna, which has remained through each Ancestry update. Was this her, or will this fragment disappear, with the new detail for India? 😁

See: www.ancestry.co.uk/c/ancestry-blog/dna/2026-ancestral-origins-coming-soon

Aw that’s lovely @CucumberSummer
So there was truth in the rumour from your Dad.
So often on Who Do You Think You Are the participant will say something like this “There was a rumour back in the day that…………but……”
And there will be a nugget of truth in it .

German is a funny one when it comes to dna tests. It doesn’t always show as you’d expect it to. I’m interested to see the ethnicity split by grandparent.

Following.

By doing the DNA test on Ancestry I found out that my Great Grandfather isn’t who I thought it was. I had suspicions from the Census records and weird going’s on but I don’t believe my dad ever knew. I’m waiting for the living relatives to log back in for my messages

Hm, that Scotland/NI split should be interesting. I got the feeling that the very broad category ('Central Scotland and Northern Ireland') introduced last time might have been because of religious sensitivities, i.e. they didn't want to divide users into Ulster Irish/Ulster Scots, but it was really too vague to make much sense to people, especially when they created new categories for the other three provinces in Ireland.

How does this work, heard about it

I seem to have had the update and the central Scotland and Northern Irish Category is still there? Are they staggering the update for different areas? Or was it called Northern Ireland and Scottish lowlands before? Am getting confused and am annoyed with myself for not saving a full copy of previous results. Ancestry says you can view your old results but that link isn't appearing for me. Has anyone else found a way to do this? Either way, some stuff has changed so an update has definitely occurred - e.g. my Leinster percentage has gone up a lot, my Devon percentage has completely disappeared etc My Spanish ancestry seems to come up as Cornish still (anyone else have this?)

I took screenshots of my results in the past and was able to compare @FletcherABC
I mostly use the Ancestry app.
I’m still getting “Central Scotland and Northern Ireland”.

Mine's not yet been updated. Perhaps the update is being staggered. I would imagine when it's all settled, you will still be able to see your previous results. I can still see the 2024 update.

Are you UK based @FletcherABC? I just seem to have the Oct 25 results today so far. I am just going by what pps have said about the Scotland/NI categories changing, but maybe they haven't. Have they retained that strange 'Donegal' category?

Some people have the new "origins" estimates already.

Mine has yet to update. I don't put any store in the origins results as they change so regualrly and are inaccuate in many ways. I do indeed have strong links in "central Scotland and N Ireland" but Ancestry defines that region as everything from Gretna to Inverness. My paternal line is from Berwickshire/Roxburghshire which is right on the border, my ancestors lived 2 miles from the border so dividing Northumbria roots from SE Scotland roots is impossible.

I think it's important to remember that these origins results were designed to give people in N America clues where to start exploring their ancestry. A white American with no clue where their ancestors arrived from 150 years previous might get a result of a mix of Ireland, Sweden and Italy and that gives them clues for their own research, for example. For those of us who lived in the UK and whose ancestors are all from the UK and Ireland as far back as we can trace it's a lot less useful.

@AInightingale Yes am UK based - there's a message saying mine was updated in September 26. But there is another message displaying that says 'Big DNA updates are coming soon! We're adding 150+ new regions etc'... so maybe a second update is coming where they change the areas? I can't see the Donegal category but that might be because I don't have any percentages from that area. However, a clear change for me is that my Central Scotland/Northern Irish percentage is lower and my Leinster percentage has gone up. Presumably they are just working through and yours will update soon too.

Yes I have Donegal in my results.
Donegal is the most northerly county in Ireland.
It is one of 9 counties in Ulster but is not part of Northern Ireland.
It is in the Republic of Ireland
Perhaps Ancestry uses Donegal as a northern Ireland area that is much less settled by Ulster Scots and English planters - To differentiate between the descendants of native Irish rather than the descendants of those involved in the Plantation of Ulster.
🤷‍♀️

Last night I had the same regions but slightly different percentages to before. Now I have new regions when I look at the DNA by parent. But the map hasn’t updated yet.

I am entirely British and Irish, so never going to be very exciting. They’ve split the Scottish and Ulster for me. I’ve now got proper south east England none of that silly France/belgium mixed in with England,

I’ve gained 6% Devon/cornwall out of nowhere from my mother. Doesn’t match the family tree that I am aware of.

I’ve lost my slightly random 2% Netherlands.

Lost my 1% Brittany but gained 2% north wales/ NW England which is more likely from the family tree.

Gained a random 1% Quebec! You can’t rely on the tiny percentages.

The map hasn’t updated yet so I can’t see if the names they’ve given to the split of England make more sense than last time (eg last time East Midlands included York… ).

I have lost the central Scotland/Northern Ireland percentage too. My Leinster percentage has gone up and I have Ulster and Munster now too. This update makes much more sense to me given what I know about my family history.

It compares for you, it shows yoh before and after, here is mine,

I felt last year's was much more accurate, given what I know about my family heritage. I have three 'Ulster'-born as in Protestant grandparents and one English grandparent from the West Country. Last update impressed me by estimating 24% south west England from the maternal line, that was almost exactly right. It's now dropped to 12%! And I'm still none the wiser about what 'Ulster Irish' means, but my Scots has dropped a lot, so does that mean a lot of planter/gael intermarriage? God knows.

Mine has actually now updated since earlier today. It's quite interesting because I am apparently now 25% Northern England and about 25% less Scottish lowlands, which really isn't born out by my research, family history and names in my tree - which are all Scottish! So @AInightingale maybe some Scots is being assigned differently.
On the other hand my Spanish ancestry has finally been identified, but I have lost my 5% Dutch (am pretty sure that at least my great great grandmother was of Dutch ancestry based on a lot of research). And 5% Dutch in my last results seemed like more than noise. So it's surprising it has just disappeared, especially given all the Dutch names in the matches I have!? So it feels like some assignments are more accurate than others. I guess as @KassandraOfSparta said earlier we need to take it with a pinch of salt.

Mine has now updated and is a lot more accurate.

The grandparents split is there now. I think I can guess which grandparent is which on my one side, but on the other side the grandparents have an almost equal Scottish/ Ulster split so there’s no way to tell who is who (and it wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t know anyway).

More interesting might be my mum’s grandparent split actually (she’s on ancestry), I’ll have a nosey of that later.

Has anyone looked at Ancestry’s chromosome painter following the update? (Go to dna, origins, by parent, and scroll down to Chromosome Painter.)

I mentioned earlier that every previous update showed I had 0-1% of dna from India, which fitted in with what my dad said. Well, that tiny 1% has finally gone entirely. However, it now seems to be unassigned dna. 😀

In fact, when I now look at my paternal dna on Chromosome Painter, there are quite a few bits that are unassigned (besides the part that was previously assigned to India). Last time, all the dna was assigned. All my mum’s dna is assigned to regions though.