In its update for the second quarter of 2026, IBM Quantum reviewed a range of developments, including large-scale quantum chemistry simulations, experiments on real quantum hardware, and open-source tools for circuit optimization and error mitigation. The company published the update on July 8, 2026, highlighting metrics on the performance of its platform, hardware availability, and research and educational resources.
Large-Scale Protein Simulation
The simulation methods used in a workflow developed by Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN, and IBM to simulate a protein comprising 12,635 atoms are now available as open source through the Qiskit community. The published materials enable exploration of some of the simulation methods used in this work, which IBM describes as a new milestone in large-scale quantum chemistry.
The platform also added an educational experiment from Quantum Advantage Tracker for simulating the dynamics of an SU(2) lattice gauge theory using 120 qubits on real quantum hardware. The experiment is based on research presented by the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, and enables comparison of quantum and classical methods, as well as examination of the circuits and workflow that goes beyond the limits of classical simulation.
New Tools for Error Mitigation and Simulation
IBM introduced an execution-oriented workflow that combines multiple quantum computing error-mitigation techniques, including SLC, PEC, TREX, and post-selection. The educational material is based on the shaded lightcones addition in Qiskit, with the aim of creating modular pipelines that combine different methods for suppressing and mitigating errors in a single flow. Starting to use this path requires upgrading to version 0.47.0 of qiskit-ibm-runtime.
IBM also announced Paulice, a new addition to Qiskit dedicated to error detection. The addition uses hardware-tailored Pauli checks based on spacetime codes, focusing on increasing accuracy, tuning the trade-off between resources and accuracy, and improving distributions produced from samples.
For developers who need to test larger problems before running them on hardware, IBM highlighted the open-source ffsim library. The library provides fast, symmetry-aware simulation of fermionic circuits, helping with prototyping, result validation, and performance benchmarking before moving to quantum devices.
Platform Metrics and Available Resources
IBM noted that the best value for the EPLG metric reached 0.19% on the ibm_boston system, while the best CLOPS metric performance exceeded 330,000 across six quantum processing units. The total number of available qubits reached 2,210 qubits distributed across 15 quantum processing units, while the number of research papers citing IBM Quantum or Qiskit reached 6,183 papers.
On the educational side, IBM made Classroom Accounts available, providing up to 100 students with free, interactive access to IBM quantum hardware, along with simplified setup and built-in supervision capabilities. The company also showcased projects using IBM Quantum Credits to develop new algorithms in fields including simulation and materials science, and invited researchers to apply for credits to conduct their experiments.
Changes to the Open Plan
Users of the Open Plan who have consumed 20 minutes during a period of up to 12 months can now unlock 180 minutes of quantum execution time. The plan includes access to advanced hardware and additional educational resources, as well as the ability to run more experiments on real quantum devices.