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What's new in SAMSON 2026 R1#

We are pleased to announce that SAMSON 2026 R1 is out!

What's new#

SAMSON 2026 R1 is a substantial update that expands what you can do in SAMSON and makes several existing workflows smoother and more robust. This release brings:

  • Path Analyzer: a new app for exploring paths and molecular dynamics trajectories;
  • support for UMA Force Field models directly in SAMSON;
  • smoother SAMSON Cloud workflows for jobs, downloads, and results;
  • richer handling of periodic systems and path-based data;
  • a broad set of usability, stability, and compatibility improvements.

The follow-up 11.0.1 patch keeps the same overall scope while adding additional fixes and polish.

Path Analyzer#

Path Analyzer is a new SAMSON app for exploring paths and molecular dynamics trajectories directly inside your document. It combines an Analysis Builder, an Analysis Tray, and an interactive dashboard so you can go from a selection to useful plots in just a few clicks.

Learn more

Visit User Guide - Path Analyzer to learn more.

Path Analyzer overview

Strain Explorer#

Use Strain Explorer to analyze how much a ligand relaxes from its starting conformation, compare local and global strain estimates, inspect a 2D strain map, and export results for reporting or further work in SAMSON.

Strain Explorer is designed for ligand libraries stored in SDF files. It keeps the imported ligands in memory, computes strain values with either UFF or UMA backends, and displays the results in a sortable table with 2D depictions, SMILES, SDF properties, strain values, RMSDs, and status messages.

Learn more

Visit the documentation page to learn more.

Strain Explorer overview

UMA Force Fields#

UMA Force Field brings interactive energy and force evaluation with the UMA family of machine-learning atomistic models into SAMSON. This opens the door to more interactive workflows with modern ML-based atomistic models directly in the application.

Learn more

Visit the UMA Force Fields tutorial to learn more.

Webinar#

On April 30, a new live webinar will introduce SAMSON 2026 R1 and its major features including in particular the Path Analyzer, the Strain Explorer, and the UMA Force Fields.

To learn more and register, visit https://1-a.io/samson2026.

Date and time: April 30, 2026, 8am PST, 11am EST, 5pm CET.

SAMSON Cloud#

Working with cloud jobs is now smoother and more practical. SAMSON 2026 R1 improves the Job Manager so that tracking jobs, downloading logs and results, and reopening or importing downloaded outputs feels more integrated into the main workflow.

These improvements are especially useful when you run remote computations and want to move quickly from a finished job to the corresponding results inside SAMSON.

Improved path and trajectory workflows#

Beyond the new Path Analyzer, SAMSON 2026 R1 also improves the way path data is handled internally. Paths can now carry richer information, which benefits workflows involving trajectories, reaction paths, optimization paths, and other step-based structural data.

In particular, path data can now retain more context related to masses, unit cells, and wrapped or unwrapped positions. In practice, this helps when reconstructing or analyzing structures across multiple steps.

Handling of jobs, downloads, and results#

SAMSON 2026 R1 strengthens job-oriented workflows throughout the application. Jobs can be tracked more consistently, downloads are better integrated into the interface, and downloaded results can be opened or imported back into SAMSON more smoothly.

These improvements are especially relevant when working with remote computations, fetched logs, or result files produced by extensions and services connected to SAMSON.

Better support for periodic systems#

This release also improves support for structures that carry unit-cell information and use periodic boundary conditions. Workflows around periodic models are now more consistent across operations such as wrapping, centering, minimum-image calculations, and supercell-related manipulations.

For users working with crystalline or otherwise periodic systems, this should make it easier for tools and extensions to preserve and reuse the relevant unit-cell context.

Stability, usability, and compatibility#

This release also includes a set of smaller but important improvements throughout the application and bundled components, including:

  • smoother behavior in parts of the window and tooltip handling;
  • more complete built-in structural-model actions;
  • safer handling of some neighbor-search edge cases;
  • fixes so that built-in default animations no longer overload the undo history;
  • follow-up fixes in 11.0.1, including more reliable platform and GPU information reporting.

Extensions and ecosystem updates#

SAMSON 2026 R1 also comes with a broad set of updates across the extension ecosystem. Highlights include:

  • Python Scripting: exposes more SAMSON functionality and makes it easier to discover and reuse exposed extension functionality through the updated Exposed Functionality Viewer.
  • Importers: several importers now reconstruct a more meaningful hierarchy from flat atomic file formats, and some of them also identify covalent bond types more accurately.
  • Secondary Structure visual models: improved support for DNA secondary structure and related refinements.
  • GROMACS Wizard: now supports user-provided index group files during preparation and subsequent steps.
  • Extension Generator: updated for the new SAMSON SDK version.
  • Crystal Creator: improved crystal loading, preserved more export-relevant metadata, and significantly improved CIF export.
  • OpenMM Wizard: updated to OpenMM v8.5.1 and improved GPU detection on Windows.

Other improvements include updates in various importers and exporters, Interaction Designer, Conformer Creator, Polymer Builder, and more.

Documentation#

The documentation has also been updated across the User Guide, extension tutorials, the Python Scripting Guide, and the Developer Guide.

For developers#

The SAMSON SDK also evolves significantly in this release, with new APIs around periodic systems, richer path data, job integration, extension parameter handling, and introspection. See the Developer Guide: Changelog.

Get SAMSON#

This is an overview, and SAMSON 2026 R1 also provides a variety of new features and fixes of reported issues. SAMSON 2026 R1 also incorporates updates in default extensions released after the previous release.

Already have SAMSON? Just restart it and you will be offered to update: follow the steps and your installation will be upgraded to the latest SAMSON.

Do not have SAMSON? Create your free account and download SAMSON. You'll be all set and ready to go within a few minutes.

Need Help?#

Have questions or feedback? Feel free to reach out via the Forum, via e-mail, via the Feedback button in SAMSON, or by directly discussing with us.