Even the earliest R1S and R1T won't be left behind. Rivian has confirmed that its completely rebuilt RivianOS 2 will arrive on both Gen 1 and Gen 2 hardware at the same time, riding in on the 2026.31 OTA update. Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid broke the news himself — and immediately added a caveat: the widely circulated “October” timeline isn't official. Bensaid never actually named a launch date.
But the groundwork is clearly being laid. The current Rivian app already lists 2026.31 as the minimum firmware for new R1 features tied to handling service requests. On RivianForums, a Gen 1 R1S owner reported receiving a preview build of OS 2, so limited test rollout appears to already be underway. That's not the same as a mass OTA push — but it does mean October is now just one of several possible windows, not the only one.
OS 2 debuted on the more affordable R2, the model Rivian is currently betting its mass-market future on. For R1, the company is essentially rolling the new software branch backward into older hardware. The graphic language and interface layout are changing, and the system itself is billed as faster and more responsive.
Still, a shared OS won't make the R1 generations functionally equal. Gen 1's hardware platform is simply weaker, so some modern driver-assistance features remain out of reach. That split has already shown up in previous updates: certain Autonomy and visualization features were reserved for second-generation vehicles only.
Unification matters for more than just owners. Instead of maintaining separate software branches for R1 and R2, Rivian's developers finally get to work from one shared architecture — especially relevant given the joint software project with Volkswagen, where a software-defined vehicle sits at the core of the partnership.
Which is why the most interesting part of this announcement isn't the new menu design — it's the simple fact that Gen 1 is getting supported at all. For vehicles built years ago on older hardware, Rivian is keeping a shared software platform alive alongside its newest model, the R2. A full feature list for 2026.31 and a date for the wider OTA rollout haven't been published yet.
