Avid has released Sibelius 2025.12 across its desktop and mobile platforms, which is likely to be the last update for this year. This update introduces an option to customize the order of score subsets and parts in a Sibelius project. Sibelius 2025.12 also improves the usefulness of the courtesy time signatures option added in 2025.10 by adding several more options, and also improves control over text directives being interpreted by player staff filters. There are also several minor improvements and bug fixes, including refining cosmetic issues that surfaced with the release of macOS 26 Tahoe.
Moreover, Avid has announced a simplified upgrade path for perpetual licensees of Sibelius. For any perpetual licensee whose upgrade plan may have expired, the price to upgrade to the latest version of Sibelius Ultimate, with one year of updates and support, is $99. (For Sibelius Artist, it is $49.) The price is the same for renewing a current upgrade plan.
Updates
Here’s what’s new in Sibelius 2025.12.
Custom parts order
Sibelius 2025.12 introduces an option to customize the order of score subsets and parts in a project.
Previously, Sibelius would order parts in a way that wasn’t totally obvious; for instance, the default order of this set of parts, which has alternate transpositions for clarinets and trumpets, is inconsistent — sometimes the alternate part is before the original part, and sometimes it’s after:
In Sibelius 2025.12 you can modify this order with the new option Change Order, which is found in Parts > Parts & Score Subsets.
Click it to bring up the Change Order of Parts and Subsets dialog, which will initially show the default order.
Check the box to enable custom sorting. (Note that this will not affect the instrument order in the full score; changing that is done the same as ever, by pressing I to open the Add or Remove Instruments dialog.) Here, I’ve organized the alternate B♭ parts to consistently appear after the original part.
After clicking OK, you can confirm this by heading back to the score to open the Parts and Subsets dropdown (the + button):
This is most useful when exporting parts to PDF (File > Export > PDF), so that the parts export in the custom order you’ve chosen.
You are using tokens so that your PDFs export in a sensible order, right?
If you ever need to reset the order to Sibelius’s default, use the Reset to Default Order button in the dialog.
The above example is one way to use this feature. You may wish to use it, say, to place all of your alternative parts at the end, as shown below. Or, depending upon your workflow, place all tacet parts together, or maybe organize by page count (i.e., all one-page parts together) for ease of printing.
Sibelius files opened in a version earlier than 2025.12 will lose the custom order.
Although this new Sibelius feature is slightly less powerful than the comparable Dorico feature (these aren’t “layouts” in the Dorico sense, and there is no option to customize the number assigned to the part), it’s also easier to grasp the concept and quickly effect the desired result with fewer steps involved. Users with projects containing large numbers of score subsets and parts will find this to be a welcome tool to tame the beast.
Improved courtesy time signatures
Sibelius 2025.10 added a new option in Appearance > Engraving Rules > Time Signatures to add a courtesy time signature to either every new page or every new spread (every left page). In covering that update, I said that, “A future iteration that would likely be helpful to many users could be if courtesy time signatures were automatically applied at the beginning of a new section, such as a new movement or song, rather than a new page or spread”.
Ask, and ye shall receive:
This makes it relatively trivial to ensure that you always have a time signature showing at the beginning of every section, assuming you’ve turned on Section End by selecting the last bar of the previous section, and opening the Inspector to select Bars > Section End.
In addition to the new Each new section option, as you can see, there is a now an option to turn on courtesy time signatures for the full score, score subsets, and/or parts separately, rather than having the option take effect globally. For instance, you might leave Parts unchecked if the sections are attacca and a redundant time signature would be confusing. On the other hand, if you’re making use of tacets, but the score flows continuously, you might want to ensure that you check Parts and uncheck the other options.
Text directive option
At the beginning of this year, in 2025.2, Sibelius added text directives as a component of decondensing parts and Player Staff Filters. Text directives are indications, usually entered as Technique text, that ensure that the correct music is displayed in the part of each player.
We noted upon the release of Sibelius 2025.2 that this was a bit confusing: The term “Text Directive” does not appear anywhere in Sibelius; and even though these directives influence part layout more than playback, they’re found and configured via the Playback Dictionary, in a section labeled Staff Filter Control:
This hasn’t changed, but at least now, in 2025.12, there is an option, in each style in Text > Styles > Edit Text Styles to control whether items in a particular text style will be interpreted or ignored by Staff Filter Control. When checked on for a given text style, text items of that style will be able to influence Player Staff Filters, and when off, defined text directives within those styles will be ignored.
In new scores, the only text style with the new option turned on by default is Technique text. This makes sense, so that, e.g., any text that may have been applied via Paste as Cue — and thus would have the Instrument name (cues) style — won’t have any undesired effect on Player Staff Filters.
In existing scores, all text styles will have this option turned on, so as not to cause any disruptions to existing material.
There is no option to disable this on an object-by-object basis, so, if you’re a power user and need even finer control here (i.e., sometimes you have Technique text that you wish to affect Player Staff Filters, and sometimes you don’t), consider making a child text style such as Technique (no text directive effect) that disables this option.
Bug fixes and other improvements
- Two decondensing issues are fixed whereby items at the end of a bar (e.g. key signature changes, special barlines, etc.) could erroneously prevent these bars from collapsing into multi-rests.
- Courtesy time signatures no longer collide with start repeat barlines.
- Rulers are now hidden within Sibelius Artist (as they can’t be toggled on or off).
- A macOS-specific crash on exit is fixed.
- When adding a staff filter to a grand staff, the filter now appears on both staves (UI issue only).
- A bug within the “undocked” Inspector where all sections were hidden is fixed.
- The “undocked” Inspector once again resizes correctly for all visible controls.
- Cloud Sharing now creates a unique URL for imported MusicXML files.
- A crash that could occur when expanding the ribbon after it had been repopulated for a different feature set is fixed.
- An issue where Sibelius did not retain output pair selections other than 1/2 when using an external audio interfaces is fixed.
- All known macOS Tahoe issues have now been addressed. In particular, those who reported strange button styling (combo boxes, text boxes, etc.), or extra high contrast colors (e.g. in the Inspector), should now see that everything matches non-Tahoe builds.
- The functionality of the Respace multi-voice passages during note input and editing option is restored.
- Translations have been added within the iOS Settings app.
- A few crashes on the Android version of Sibelius for mobile are fixed.
- Sibelius for mobile now appends the name of the notehead types within the command search gallery.
Simplified upgrade path for perpetual licensees
Avid has announced a simplified upgrade path for perpetual licensees of Sibelius. For any perpetual licensee whose upgrade plan may have expired, the price to upgrade to the latest version of Sibelius Ultimate, with one year of updates and support, is $99. (For Sibelius Artist, it is $49.) The price is the same $99 for renewing a current upgrade plan.
This is an especially good deal for anyone who may still be hanging on to an older version of Sibelius. Even if you have a very old version, like Sibelius 6, or Sibelius 2 — you’re eligible for the $99 price to get current with a perpetual license, with one year of support and upgrades.
Sibelius updates have been very stable in recent years. Gone are the days where it felt risky to update, say, from 6.2 or 7.1.3 to a more modern version. But the generally regular and incremental updates have meant that a Sibelius file created in an earlier version will open fine in the current version, and you’ll have the benefit of support if for some reason something goes wrong. Sibelius users on older versions won’t find themselves terribly disoriented in the latest version — even Sibelius 2 looks surprisingly recognizable, 25 years later.
If you have (or think you have) an old perpetual license to Sibelius 7 or later, log into your account. If you have a license of Sibelius 6 or earlier, you may not have an Avid account to log into, so contact Avid for more details.
There are, of course, a handful of reasons to wait: the old caveat of not updating during an active, time-sensitive project still applies, and you’ll want to hold off if you’re collaborating with anyone else who refuses to upgrade. You may also wish to refrain from upgrading if you’re on a very old operating system that won’t support Sibelius 2025.12, but rocking an unsupported Apple or Windows OS is not a good idea for other reasons.
Otherwise, consult our Product Guide for links to articles covering nearly every Sibelius update since 8.5 (that would have been 2016.12) to learn what’s new in each of them, and if you search hard enough on Scoring Notes, you’ll find many articles that go back even further.
Note that this change only applies to perpetual licensees; there is no change in subscription pricing, which, for Sibelius Ultimate, is $199 annually (currently on sale for $133 for the first year).
Compatibility and availability
Sibelius 2025.12 uses the same file format as Sibelius 2025.10, 2025.8, 2025.7, 2025.4, 2025.3, and Sibelius 2025.2. Note that some features, like the new custom parts order feature, will gracefully degrade if the feature does not exist in a previous version of Sibelius.
Sibelius 2025.2 used a new file format. Files saved directly in 2025.12 will not be able to be opened in an earlier version of Sibelius prior to 2025.2 without first exporting them in File > Export > Previous Version. If you’re collaborating with someone else that’s using a previous version, be sure to find out what version they’re using.
The Sibelius 2025.12 desktop update is free for all Sibelius users with active subscriptions and upgrade plans. The updated installers for desktop are available through users’ Avid accounts and through Avid Link.
The Sibelius 2025.12 iOS/iPadOS update and the Sibelius app for Android and Chromebook are available in the usual way, and will be delivered automatically, or, if you’ve disabled automatic updates, you can manually update the app on your device. Some of the features may only be available on the desktop version of Sibelius.
Typically our Scoring Notes coverage only extends to the Sibelius Ultimate version of the application. Not all features are available in all tiers of Sibelius.
A reminder that if you’re an existing Sibelius customer with an active support plan or subscription, you get the mobile version at the same tier at no extra charge. If you have a subscription to Sibelius Artist (mid-tier) on your Mac or PC, that will carry over to Sibelius Artist for Mobile, and the same for Sibelius Ultimate — a Mac or PC subscription allows you full access to Sibelius Ultimate on iPhone and iPad.
Learn more
For the latest information about compatibility for Sibelius, Dorico, and MuseScore, as well as links to the latest news and reviews about product releases, please see the Scoring Notes Product Guide.
Avid also has a “What’s New in Sibelius” page highlighting the features in recent Sibelius updates.
The orchestral compositions featured in the screenshots demonstrating Sibelius 2025.12 are “Inspiration! Festive Overture” and “A Joyous Trilogy”, by Quinn Mason. Also available for band: “Inspiration! Festive Overture” and “A Joyous Trilogy”.
