What's new and changed in Watson Studio Runtimes

Watson Studio Runtimes updates can include new features and fixes. Releases are listed in reverse chronological order so that the latest release is at the beginning of the topic.

You can see a list of the new features for the platform and all of the services at What's new in IBM Software Hub.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.2.2

A new version of Watson Studio Runtimes was released in October 2025.

This release includes the following changes:

New features
Watson Studio Runtimes includes the following features:
New GPU runtime for Runtime 25.1

You can now use Runtime 25.1 on Python 3.12 for GPUs.

Customer-reported issues fixed in this release
For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak® for Data on the IBM Support website.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.2.1

A new version of Watson Studio Runtimes was released in August 2025.

This release includes the following changes:

New features
This release of Watson Studio Runtimes includes the following features:
Run NLP code by using the latest 25.1 runtime

You can now use Runtime 25.1 on Python 3.12 to run NLP code.

For more information, see Watson Natural Language Processing library.

Customer-reported issues fixed in this release
For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak for Data on the IBM Support website.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.2.0

A new version of Watson Studio Runtimes was released in June 2025.

This release includes the following changes:

New features
This release of Watson Studio Runtimes includes the following features:
Write your Python notebook code and R Scripts in the new 25.1 runtime

You can now write your Python notebook code and R scripts in the new 25.1 runtime:

  • In the notebook editor, you can use the Runtime 25.1 on Python 3.12 environment on a limited number of platforms.
  • In RStudio, you can write your scripts in the RStudio with Runtime 25.1 on R 4.4 environment.
  • In JupyterLab, you can write your scripts in the JupyterLab with Runtime 25.1 on Python 3.12 environment.

You must install Python software packages by using pip because conda is not available in the new runtime.

For more information, see Environments.

Updates
The following updates were introduced in this release:
The project-lib library is removed from the 25.1 runtime

The project-lib library is removed from the new 25.1 runtime. In older runtimes, project-lib remains available.

For more information, see Migrating Python code and Migrating R code.

The Spark 3.4 & R 4.2 environment is removed

The Spark 3.4 & R 4.2 environment is removed. If you have assets that use this environment, you must update them.

For more information, see Spark environments and Changing environments.

Customer-reported issues fixed in this release
For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak for Data on the IBM Support website.
Deprecated features
The following features were deprecated in this release:
Removal of the conda package management system

The conda package management system is removed from the 25.1 runtime. If you want to install Python packages in environments that are based on runtime 25.1, you must install them by using pip.

For more information, see Environments.