And now to the big question that many of you have been asking: what happens with the distro from here on out? Well, we have some good news. According to the Discourse post, a new development team has taken over flavor management, bug fixes, package updates, and ongoing development. So, yes, Ubuntu Mate is still alive and keeps going.
Ubuntu MATE, the official Ubuntu flavor features MATE desktop environment, will quite possibly have a 26.10 release few months later in October!
As they say, all publicity is good publicity.