Galactic Weekly: Week 5, 2026

Weekly summary of activity across 150+ galaxyproject repositories

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February 1, 2026

Galactic Weekly

Summary

Repositories with activity: 20
New issues: 41
Issues closed: 24
PRs opened: 146
PRs merged: 84
Contributors: 58

Highlights

The Galaxy Project released version 26.0 release candidate 1 and continued development on version 26.1, adding an AI-powered tool recommendation feature and fixing various workflow and authentication issues. The project's documentation hub received updates to resolve technical problems with the Astro framework and added several new event pages. Tool repositories were updated with regular automated installations and version updates, including three new tools (PIRATE, Mgnify genome search, and datavrzd) and fixes for tools causing failures on Galaxy instances. The analytics platform gained LLM-powered natural language search functionality and improved workflows quality control reporting.

Most Active Repositories

Repository	PRs Opened	PRs Merged	Issues Opened	Issues Closed
galaxy	41	24	16	13
galaxy-hub	18	12	3	1
usegalaxy-tools	19	12	0	0
brc-analytics	11	9	11	7
tools-iuc	18	5	5	1
training-material	12	10	0	2
galaxy_codex	4	4	1	0
galaxy-visualizations	4	4	0	0
iwc	5	0	1	0
galaxy-mcp	2	1	0	0

Repository Summaries

training-material

The Galaxy Project training-material repository received updates to external event listings with Love Data Week added, and several organizational changes including new organizations and contributors imported from galaxy-hub along with grants file updates. Tutorial content was enhanced with pre-visualization features and updated steps, while technical maintenance included updates to cached commit data and persistent URLs.

galaxy-hub

The Galaxy Project's hub repository received updates to fix multiple technical issues with the Astro framework, including missing images in subdirectories and URL routing problems. Several new event pages were added, including events for Galaxy Tools at University Library Freiburg, a NUBRI kickoff meeting, and updated details for the 2026 Metagenome Training Course and GCC2026 conference. The repository also synchronized content with the Galaxy Training Network materials and imported GTN events and metadata.

usegalaxy-tools

This week, the usegalaxy-tools repository received regular automated updates to maintain tool versions across different Galaxy instances, with daily installations of Intergalactic Workflow Commission (IWC) tools for usegalaxy.org and periodic updates to cloud and other repositories. The maintainers also added or updated several specific tools, including egapx (updated to its latest version), lexicmap wrapper (updated to latest version), pysradb_search (newly installed), and chainswap (added to the main .org instance).

brc-analytics

The Galaxy Project's brc-analytics repository added LLM-powered natural language search functionality and a white papers section to the homepage while removing the survey card. The team also improved the release workflow to handle different branch versions, enhanced the workflows quality control report, and updated to the latest version of the findable-ui component library.

tools-iuc

This week, the Galaxy Project's tools-iuc repository added three new tools (PIRATE, Mgnify genome search, and datavrzd) and updated existing tools including fastp (to version 1.1.0) and vgp_processcuration (to version 1.1). The team also fixed issues with the mitobim form and resolved a problem affecting Medaka tools version 2.1.1+galaxy0 that was causing failures on Galaxy Australia and other Galaxy instances.

galaxy

The Galaxy Project released version 26.0 release candidate 1 and began development on version 26.1, while merging bug fixes from the 25.1 branch. Key changes include adding an AI-powered tool recommendation feature, fixing workflow-related issues like duplicated user sharing entries and HTCondor job monitoring problems, and resolving authentication issues with OIDC usernames and repository credential handling.

usegalaxy-playbook

This week, the Galaxy Project's usegalaxy-playbook repository received two new tool installation requests. Users requested the addition of gwtc_analysis for astronomy workflows and bcftools_plugin_split_vep to be installed on the ORG and AU Galaxy instances, as it is currently only available on the EU server.

galaxy-k8s-boot

This week, the Galaxy Project's galaxy-k8s-boot repository had one pull request merged that added masthead images to the project. This appears to be a visual enhancement to the user interface components of the Kubernetes-based Galaxy deployment tool.

galaxy_codex

This week, the Galaxy Project's galaxy_codex repository received updates to its imaging lab content and interactive tables functionality. The team also implemented automatic resource updates, upgraded the Ruby setup from version 1.284.0 to 1.286.0, and opened a discussion about promoting peer-reviewed content in Labs, specifically addressing SPOC (Single Point of Contact) implementation.

galaxy-visualizations

This week, the Galaxy Project's visualization tools repository received four updates focused on bug fixes and feature additions. The changes included restoring a default value, fixing the plot height display in the LocusZoom visualization tool, adding a materializer component to the Polaris tool, and updating the chromosome input type in LocusZoom along with a version upgrade.

bioblend

This week, the Galaxy Project's bioblend repository had one merged pull request that added a new method for extracting help text from tools. This enhancement allows developers to programmatically access tool documentation and usage information through the bioblend API.

galaxy-mcp

The Galaxy Project's "galaxy-mcp" repository had one merged pull request this week that updated the schema version and bumped the package version to 1.3.0. This appears to be a routine version update for the project's release cycle.

gxy.io

This week, the Galaxy Project's "gxy.io" repository had one merged pull request that added a JXTX shortener for BoG. The change appears to be a minor addition to the URL shortening functionality of the service.

iwc

This week, the Galaxy Project's "iwc" repository had one new issue created regarding testing release 26.0. No other notable activity occurred in terms of pull requests, commits, or other repository changes during this period.

planemo

This week, one new issue was opened in the Galaxy Project's planemo repository titled "Planemo improvements," though no specific details about the proposed improvements were provided in the summary. No other development activity, such as code commits or pull requests, was mentioned for this period.

galaxy-release-util

This week, one new issue was reported for the galaxy-release-util repository concerning the utility incorrectly assuming invalid previous or next release versions. No other development activity, such as commits, pull requests, or releases, was recorded during this period.