Avid has released Sibelius 2025.8 across its desktop and mobile platforms. This is a maintenance update that mainly corrects or refines elements of the application that were introduced or updated in the previous release, Sibelius 2025.7.
Additionally, Sibelius First, the free product tier, is now easier to obtain, without registering with Avid.
Updates
Here’s what’s new in Sibelius 2025.8.
UX
- Users of Sibelius First are able to add comments from the Review tab once more.
- On mobile, the text that describes the stave limits in each tier of Sibelius is fixed.
- The Preferences dialog no longer takes up so much vertical space and is also resizable.
- The “field” name in Preferences > Status Bar is now “Element”.
- When going to Preferences after switching tiers, Sibelius now remembers which pane was last opened.
- The page layout icons on the status bar more reliably toggle based on the tier you’re running.
- All view options are displayed on the status bar when running Sibelius First directly (hold Alt when starting Sibelius to switch).
Bug fixes
- Sibelius no longer crashes in rare cases when running in Sibelius First mode.
- “Extract Parts” in German has been changed from “Stimme herausziehen” to “Stimme extrahieren”.
- The Playback Configuration button in the Ribbon is no longer grayed out (even though it was fully functional).
- When pasting music from one score to another using a system selection, and the number of staves is different between the two scores, the message that pops up now has a Don’t say this again checkbox, allowing you to permanently dismiss the message so you are no longer interrupted when pasting.
- A crash associated with opening scores that contain very long multi-page text blocks is fixed.
Other
- The latest documentation is included, as well as removed old PDFs from the installer that are no longer needed.
- More extensive support for more types of Android and Chromebooks is added, doubling the available devices Sibelius is able to run on to more than over 16,000 different types of Android devices.
Mobile support for the new Scoring Express Choral & Vocal suites
One particular update on the mobile side that I’m pleased to see: The mobile versions of the Sibelius apps now include the Crimson Pro font, which is the text font used in the brand-new Scoring Express Choral & Vocal suites we released earlier this week.
When you install Scoring Express on the desktop, the fonts are installed on your computer at that time, but due to a limitation in the Qt framework that is used to develop Sibelius (and Dorico, for that matter), you can’t install third-party fonts on Sibelius for mobile without the developer explicitly including them with the app. Special thanks to Avid for so quickly supporting our templates with the addition of this new font on the mobile platform.
Avid is in the process of including this for their cloud services too, so music shared online will be able to use the font too, so that scores created with the Scoring Express templates and house styles will appear the same across desktop, mobile, and the cloud.
Sibelius First – one-click download
If you had just heard about this thing called music notation software and someone recommended that you try Sibelius’s free tier, well, you’d be pretty excited. You’d learn it was called “Sibelius First”, and, naturally, you’d type that into your search engine, upon which you’d be taken to this page:
Naturally there are good reasons why Avid, or any company would require you to register to use their software, even free software. But surely the presentation here of an “Avid Master Account” discouraged some people, running contrary to the goal of getting them to use Sibelius First.
As of now, though, there’s a dedicated web page for it — and, more importantly, a one-click download button.
Clearly, Sibelius is competing with the other free offerings in the space, especially MuseScore Studio and Dorico SE. The former offers a one-click download experience; the latter, not (yet).
Compatibility and availability
Sibelius 2025.8 uses the same file format as Sibelius 2025.7, 2025.4, 2025.3, and Sibelius 2025.2.
Sibelius 2025.2 used a new file format. Files saved directly in 2025.8 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 2025.8 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 2025.8 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.
