Prebuilt VyOS 1.2.6-epa1 image is available to subscribers! You can find it in the downloads section of the support portal.
You may be curious why a prebuilt image took so long to publish this time. The reason is that we've been testing a new push button release procedure. There are still small issues here and there, but we are pretty close, and when it's done, it will be quite a time saver and let us spent more time on features and bugs.
We encourage everyone to test the 1.2.6-epa1 image. We use EPA (Early Production Access) release ourselves and recommend them to customers, but we have all LTS releases go through a testing period so that we can identify and fix remaining bugs (if any) before release GA
Community members can always build their own images from the crux branch and test them. Finding bugs in upcoming LTS and rolling releases alike is and will also be a way to earn a contributor subscription, and we are happy to share our work on prebuilt LTS images with everyone who helps us.