Embedded Rust Education: A Look Forward to 2026

Introduction

Another year comes to an end; as always, it is an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the past year and look forward to the next. It's been over 3.5 years since I embarked on my embedded Rust journey, and it only gets more exciting. This post will be a round-up of some of the main milestones in 2025 and what is planned for 2026.

I am always grateful for all the feedback and notes I keep receiving from the embedded & Rust community. If you have anything to add at any time please feel free to reach out on any social account or just email hi@theembeddedrustacean.com.

2025 Reflections 🪞

The goal remains to address more gaps in the embedded Rust educational ecosystem. A big part of it is attracting first-time embedded, curious users who are into Rust. More parts of the ecosystem are becoming stable, but there are still many moving parts. Here are some of the milestones in 2025:

• ⬆️ Simplified Embedded Rust Updates: Both the core library edition and standard library edition of Simplified Embedded Rust were updated twice in 2025. The changes accommodated Wokwi changes and the release of the no-std esp-hal 1.0.0, among others. The most recent update introduced a whole new project chapter that mimics a real-world product. Additionally, in May, the STM32 Blog Collection Edition was added to the book series. The new edition was created to collect all the STM32 blog posts from The Embedded Rustacean Blog in a single resource.

• 💵 Simplified Embedded Rust Pricing Model Update: Now that the esp-hal project is becoming more stable, the updates for the book are going to be less frequent, which warrants a change. As such, the subscription model was discontinued in September. The Simplified Embedded Rust adopted a pay once, receive updates forever model. This excludes the STM32 Blog Collection Edition, which can be obtained for free by subscribing to and sharing The Embedded Rustacean Newsletter.

• 📚 900+ Copies Sold: Since its launch in May 2024, Simplified Embedded Rust has sold over 900 copies in digital and print formats. This is around a 500-copy increase from the end of 2024.

• 🗞️ 61 Newsletter Editions: The Embedded Rustacean newsletter was launched in 2023 as a source for everything embedded Rust and is still going strong. While 2023 ended with nine editions, 2024 ended with 35, and now the newsletter is closing 2025 with 61 editions. The newsletter continued to operate twice a month throughout 2025.

• 🤓 5k+ Subscribers: The Embedded Rustacean Newsletter’s growth has been phenomenal. We ended 2024 with a little over 3k subscribers and now end 2025 with more than 5k. Maintaining the newsletter has also become much more challenging than the previous year. With the emergence of AI and LLMs, the internet has been flooded with technically inaccurate content, making it more time-consuming to filter through. The Embedded Rustacean thankfully maintained its high engagement rates, positioning itself as a trusted source.

• 🦀 uFerris Hardware Announcement: I've probably mentioned in the past that many Rustaceans have reached out with interest in content about real hardware. However, I was always wondering what the best format is to deliver more content with physical hardware. As such, in September of 2025, the uFerris hardware initiative was announced to The Embedded Rustacean subscribers. uFerris is meant to serve as companion hardware for Simplified Embedded Rust and as a beginner-friendly development board that supports multiple controllers. Subscribers were polled on whether they would be interested in uFerris, and more than 70% agreed it was a good fit for them. Ever since, the effort to create the uFerris hardware has been launched. Prototype boards were manufactured and sent to early access users for evaluation. You can learn more about uFerris here.

A Look Forward to 2026 🔮

What’s in Plan

Just like before, I do much of this work in my spare time. As a result, to continue offering the best-quality material, I try to focus on what would benefit the community most by listening to the feedback I receive.

• 📖 Simplified Embedded Rust Roadmap: While the esp-hal project is stabilizing, there are still a few planned updates in the book's short-term roadmap. One update involves adding support for esp-radio (formerly esp-wifi) in the no-std edition of the book. This ultimately depends on when esp-radio reaches stability, but hopefully an update will be out on or around Q2 of 2026. Another update would involve accommodating the uFerris hardware by complementing the existing book examples for uFerris.

• 🦀 uFerris Hardware: uFerris hardware is currently being evaluated, and another hardware iteration is planned before becoming available for pre-order. Pre-orders are expected to start around Q2 of 2026. To stay up to date with what’s happening on uFerris, make sure to subscribe to The Embedded Rustacean.

• 📖 Additional Educational Material? Beyond the material in the books, I reckon there should be additional material to help learners expand their knowledge into more advanced (or even different) concepts. This could take the form of another book, microcourses, blog posts, or similar content. The challenge stems from the ecosystem's dynamic nature, which makes it harder to maintain the material consistently. What I have in mind going forward is creating more uFerris-centric material, maybe even driving community efforts toward it. uFerris is meant to serve as a reference platform that can accommodate multiple controllers.

• 🌲 Expand Embedded Rust Reach & Continue Growing Newsletter: The newsletter has been a core part of giving back to the community. The efforts to grow it will continue, hopefully enabling me to provide high-quality content continuously.

• 🏟️ Conferences: In 2024, I was fortunate to talk at the Rust in Paris conference. You can find the video here. There is more I have planned for 2026, but it is yet to be confirmed. Stay tuned!

Acknowledgments 🙏

Finally, I would like to thank everybody who contributed to these accomplishments; without their effort, none of the above would have been possible.

Conclusion

2025 has been nothing less than spectacular for embedded Rust. Embedded educational material is in a much better place now, but there is still much to catch up on. There is still a gap between the ecosystem's updates and the supporting educational material. The dynamic nature of many projects is probably the primary contributor to that gap. However, we seem to be inching toward more stability, at least in some of the more significant projects. Hopefully, 2026 is the year when many of these gaps are closed.