WordPress has released the beta1 version of 2.6 Released few days ago with around 50 fixes and here’s what Ryan had to say,

If you are an IIS or i18n user, we’ve fixed a few annoying bugs that might be bothering you depending on your hosting setup. If you are an IE user who uses Press This, we fixed some image insertion problems for you.

Check out all the 50 fixes. The changes in the new version would include,
* Allow disabling password reset per-user.
* Query functions allow a comma-separated list of post_status values.
* Several more link generation bits are made SSL-aware.
* Advertise the Atom 1.0 feed in the default theme.
* Atom API uses the newer WP authentication functions.
* Fix for an object caching bug in plugin updates.

Download and test the WordPress 2.6.1 Beta1 (.zip)