I was under the impression that Wikibase.cloud would track LTS releases, the last transition being MW 1.39 to 1.43; is that no longer the case (i.e. users will get to use MW 1.44 in 2026), or is it more a matter of reducing the delta for the next update by maintaining a live development branch? (I know there was one user seeking to use TemplateStyles, which is bundled from 1.44, but I guess that's not the reason...)

@GreenReaper I think the honest answer is that we don't know yet. There is a product incentive to have more features consistent across the Wikibase Ecosystem (Wikidata, Cloud, Suite). What that means for WB Cloud and our update cadence is still TBD. Personally, I would like to see us reduce the effort required for doing updates so we can do them more often. We did manage to spend some time during the 1.39 to 1.43 update to improve the update process. I'll update this task to be slightly clearer.

In case it helps to gauge interest, a straw poll on the Telegram group suggested a 2/3 preference for regular point upgrades over LTS for Wikibase.Cloud.

Personally I picked the latter because I know they're a hassle and I'd prefer that work went into the Wikibase core or cloud platform additions (and making sure LTS works well for Cloud also helps third-parties using LTS), but I can see the appeal if you can reduce the update cost.