LG reveals drawn-out plans for upgrading your OLED or LCD TV’s webOS

LG has mixed news for owners of 2022 and 2023 OLED and LCD TVs: webOS 24 is coming and it’ll include Chromecast support… but you’ll have to wait for it. While 2022, 2023 and 2024 LG TVs are all included in LG’s “webOS ReNew program”, there’s going to be a significant gap between the arrival of webOS versions in new LG TVs and the availability of upgrades to the same software for existing televisions.

The news comes via FlatpanelsHD, which attended a recent LG event in Frankfurt where the upgrade plans for the best LG TVs were explained. The short version is that for existing TVs, webOS upgrades will arrive roughly one year after the software is made available in brand new LG TVs – so the latest LG TVs will always be a year ahead of existing ones.

What is the LG webOS ReNew program?

As we previously reported, LG’s webOS ReNew program brings the latest webOS to existing TVs including every single model in LG’s 2022 OLED TV series, including the OLED Flex, the OLED Objet Collection Posé and the QNED Mini-Led 8K.

In LG’s presentation this week, it outlined its plans in more detail. All 2022 models are planned to get webOS versions up to webOS 26; 2023 LG TVs will get versions up to webOS 27; and 2024 models will get webOS versions up to webOS 28.

The timings of those updates have been detailed too, which you can see below:  

• 2022 models: webOS 23 in 2024, webOS 24 in 2025, webOS 25 in 2026 and webOS 26 in 2027
• 2023 models: webOS 24 in 2025, webOS 25 in 2026, webOS 26 in 2027 and webOS 27 in 2028
• 2024 models: webOS 25 in 2026, webOS 26 in 2027, webOS 27 in 2028 and webOS 28 in 2029

While LG says that the timings are subject to change and that there “may be more” supported models than the TVs already announced – a lot of which have made up the best TVs we’ve tested at some point or another – the pattern is clear enough.

I can’t help thinking that this is a marketing decision rather than a technological one, although LG says that it needs the extra year to ensure stability and performance on older sets. But if it is a marketing move it’s an odd one. It seems strange to promise four webOS updates on a TV and then add the caveat “but of course, they’ll be a year out of date when you get each one of them”.

When webOS 24 does arrive, it’ll add Chromecast support to 2022 and 2023 LG TVs as well as an updated user interface – and more visible advertising too, which is part of a wider business strategy for the company for the past few months. 

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Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall (Twitter) has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR.