How to Install WiFi Drivers on Ubuntu 26.04 – Broadcom, Offline & Fixes

Find your Wi-Fi chip

For Wi-Fi built into a laptop or a card inside a PC:

lspci -nnk | grep -A3 -i net

mike@ubuntu:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -A3 -i net
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Dual Band Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: ...
	Kernel modules: bcma

Look at the Network controller line. The code in square brackets at the end, here 14e4:43a0, is the chip’s ID. The first half names the maker: 8086 is Intel, 14e4 Broadcom, 10ec Realtek, 14c3 MediaTek, 168c or 17cb Qualcomm.

A Kernel driver in use line means a driver is already loaded. In the example there is none, so this card needs one.

For a USB Wi-Fi adapter, use this instead. The ID comes straight after the word ID:

lsusb

mike@ubuntu:~$ lsusb
...
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:b812 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. ...

Get a temporary connection

Installing a driver needs internet, and Wi-Fi is the thing that is broken. Either of these works with no driver at all:

• Your phone over USB. Plug it in with a charging cable. On Android, turn on USB tethering in the hotspot settings. On an iPhone, turn on Personal Hotspot and tap Trust when asked. Ubuntu shows it as a wired connection within a few seconds.
• An Ethernet cable to your router, if the computer has a network port.

No phone or cable? The Broadcom driver is on the Ubuntu 26.04 USB stick itself. Do step 1, then install it from the USB stick.

Install the driver your chip needs

Find your chip’s maker and ID in the table:

Whatever the chip, install updates first. Wi-Fi firmware and driver fixes arrive this way:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

If your Broadcom ID is in the table, install its driver:

sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms

It builds the driver for your kernel, which takes a minute or two, and blocks the open-source Broadcom drivers that would clash with it. It comes from Ubuntu’s own restricted repository, which is turned on by default.

With Secure Boot on, the install asks you to choose a password. Pick a simple one. You type it once, at the next boot.

Additional Drivers may not list this driver, so install it by name as shown. The same goes for sudo ubuntu-drivers install.

Reboot and connect

sudo reboot

If you set a Secure Boot password, a blue MOK management screen appears before Ubuntu starts. Choose Enroll MOK, then Continue, then Yes, type the password and choose Reboot. It only waits a few seconds, so stay at the screen.

Your networks now show in the Wi-Fi menu in the top-right corner. To check from the terminal:

nmcli device status

mike@ubuntu:~$ nmcli device status
DEVICE  TYPE      STATE                   CONNECTION
wlp3s0  wifi      connected               ...
lo      loopback  connected (externally)  lo

A wifi line means the driver is working, whether or not it says connected yet. No wifi line at all? See If Something Goes Wrong.

Plug in the USB stick and open it

Plug it in. Ubuntu opens it in Files. Then point the terminal at it:

sudo mount --bind "$(dirname /media/$USER/*/pool)" /mnt

ls /mnt/pool/restricted/b/broadcom-sta/

mike@ubuntu:~$ ls /mnt/pool/restricted/b/broadcom-sta/
broadcom-sta-dkms_6.30.223.271-29ubuntu1_amd64.deb

If the first command says the folder does not exist, Ubuntu has not opened the stick yet. Click it once in the Files sidebar and run it again.

Add the USB stick as a package source

echo "deb [trusted=yes] file:/mnt resolute main restricted" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-usb.list

sudo apt update

The update shows errors for the online servers, because there is no internet. Ignore them. The line that matters starts with Get: or Hit: and mentions file:/mnt.

Install the driver

sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms

apt takes the driver, the build tools and the kernel headers from the USB stick. The Secure Boot password prompt from step 3 above appears here too.

Remove the USB source and reboot

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-usb.list
sudo umount /mnt
sudo reboot

Enrol the key at the blue screen if you set a password, then connect to Wi-Fi. Once online, run the update command from step 3 to bring everything up to date.

Wi-Fi is switched off and will not turn on

rfkill list

mike@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no

Soft blocked: yes means Ubuntu has it turned off, often through Airplane Mode. Unblock it:

rfkill unblock wifi

Hard blocked: yes means a switch outside Ubuntu. Look for a Wi-Fi key, usually one of the F keys pressed with Fn, or a slider on the side of older laptops. If neither helps, check that wireless is turned on in the firmware settings.

The driver loads but no networks appear

This is usually missing firmware. The kernel log says so:

sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'firmware|wlan|wifi'

A line saying a .bin or .ucode file failed to load means the firmware package is damaged or incomplete. Reinstall the one for your chip and reboot:

sudo apt install --reinstall linux-firmware-realtek
sudo reboot

The others are linux-firmware-intel-wireless, linux-firmware-mediatek, linux-firmware-broadcom-wireless and linux-firmware-qualcomm-wireless.

For a very new Intel card that shows in lspci with no driver, Ubuntu has a newer Intel Wi-Fi driver. It is signed, so Secure Boot accepts it without a key:

sudo apt install linux-modules-iwlwifi-generic-hwe-26.04
sudo reboot

Broadcom driver installed, but still no Wi-Fi

Check that the driver was built and loads:

dkms status
sudo modprobe wl

mike@ubuntu:~$ dkms status
broadcom-sta/6.30.223.271, 7.0.0-..., x86_64: installed

If modprobe says Key was rejected by service, Secure Boot is blocking the driver because its key was never enrolled. Set a new password, reboot and enrol it at the blue screen as in step 4:

sudo update-secureboot-policy --enroll-key
sudo reboot

The NVIDIA drivers guide walks through the same blue screen for its driver. If dkms status shows nothing, reinstall the package with your temporary connection, or from the USB stick.

An older Broadcom card still has no Wi-Fi

Some older Broadcom cards use the built-in b43 driver, which needs firmware that Ubuntu cannot ship. The kernel log mentions b43 when this is the case:

sudo dmesg | grep -i b43

Install the firmware with a temporary connection. The package downloads it from Broadcom while it installs, so it does not work offline:

sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer
sudo reboot

Wi-Fi keeps dropping or is slow

Wi-Fi power saving is on by default and some chips handle it badly. Turn it off:

printf '[connection]\nwifi.powersave = 2\n' | sudo tee /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave-off.conf
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

Wi-Fi reconnects within a few seconds. If drops continue, the cause is usually signal or router channel, not the driver.

Go back to the open-source drivers

sudo apt purge broadcom-sta-dkms
sudo apt autoremove
sudo reboot

Purge also deletes the file that blocks the open-source Broadcom drivers, so they load again after the reboot.

To undo the power saving fix, delete its file and restart NetworkManager:

sudo rm /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave-off.conf
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager