The two Chrome updates shipping this summer will close the last door that has kept the popular ad blocker uBlock Origin, and a handful of other older ad blockers, working on Google's browser.
Chrome 150 lands in late June, and Chrome 151 follows in July. Together, the two releases remove the last remaining code paths that let ad blockers built for the old extension platform, called Manifest V2, keep running on top of the newer Manifest V3 platform that Google introduced as the replacement. Most Chrome users already navigated this shift in 2024, when Google first deprecated Manifest V2 and pushed the browser's extension ecosystem onto Manifest V3. The 2026 updates are the cleanup step, not a new policy reversal.
According to The Verge's reporting, which attributes the Chrome 150 and 151 timeline to 9to5Google's coverage of the Chromium roadmap, uBlock Origin is the last major holdout among Manifest V2 ad blockers. Most users moved in 2024 either to a Manifest V3-compatible blocker, most obviously uBlock Origin Lite, or to an alternative browser. Mozilla Firefox and Brave continue to support the older extension standard, and Firefox has long been the default refuge for ad-blocking power users.
That leaves a smaller pool of affected users, and they tend to be the most technical: people running niche filters, custom rulesets, or older forks of AdGuard and AdBlock Plus that were never rewritten for the new platform. For them, the practical question starting this summer is what to switch to.
There are two honest paths. Stay in Chrome and move to a Manifest V3 blocker, most obviously uBlock Origin Lite, the same developer team's stripped-down replacement for the original uBlock Origin. Or switch to a browser that still supports Manifest V2 extensions; Firefox has been the standard refuge for power users, and Brave has also retained compatibility. The trade-off is real, and it cuts in both directions. Manifest V3 blockers are widely considered less flexible than their Manifest V2 counterparts, particularly for users who rely on deep customization, custom filtering rules, or workarounds for sites that try to detect and defeat ad blockers. That is a legitimate cost of the platform transition, not a detail to bury in the fine print.
On the other side of the argument, Google describes Manifest V3 as more secure and characterizes the old extension model as creating technical debt and a security risk. The Verge quotes a Google developer on the Chromium commit describing the remaining Manifest V2 code as technical debt and a security risk. That argument has merit. It is also the argument Google made when the deprecation began in 2024, so the 2026 updates are best read as the end of a long-scheduled migration rather than a sudden tightening.
What to watch next: the actual Chrome 150 release notes when they ship, to confirm which specific APIs and flags are being removed and whether any third-party toolchains break in the process. For most readers, the change will be invisible. For the smaller group still running uBlock Origin or another Manifest V2 blocker, the change will arrive in the next two browser updates, and the right move is to pick a replacement before Chrome updates itself.