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The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) is providing daily analyses and forecasts of the composition of the atmosphere, including the reactive gases such as O3, CO, NO2, HCHO, SO2, aerosol species and greenhouse gases. The global CAMS analysis system (IFS-COMPO) is based on the ECMWF Integrated Forecast System (IFS) for numerical weather prediction (NWP), and assimilates a large number of composition satellite products on top of the meteorological observations ingested in IFS. The CAMS system receives regular upgrades, following the upgrades of IFS. The last upgrade, Cy48R1, operational since 27 June 2023, was major with a large number of code changes, both for COMPO and for NWP. The main COMPO innovations include the introduction of full stratospheric chemistry, a major update of the emissions, of the aerosol model, including the representation of secondary organic aerosol, several updates of the dust life cycle and optics, inorganic chemistry in the troposphere, and the assimilation of VIIRS AOD and TROPOMI CO. The CAMS Cy48R1 upgrade was validated using a large number of independent measurement datasets, including surface in situ, surface remote sensing, routine aircraft and balloon and satellite observations. In this paper we present the validation results for Cy48R1 by comparing with the skill of the previous operational system (Cy47R3), with the independent observations as reference, for the period October 2022 to June 2023 during which daily forecasts from both cycles are available. Major improvements in skill are found for the ozone profile in the lower-middle stratosphere and for stratospheric NO2 due to the inclusion of full stratospheric chemistry. Stratospheric trace gases compare well with ACE-FTS observations between 10–200 hPa, with larger deviations between 1–10 hPa. The impact of the updated emissions is especially visible over East Asia and is beneficial for the trace gases O3, NO2, and SO2. The CO column assimilation is now anchored by IASI instead of MOPITT which is beneficial for most of the CO comparisons, and the assimilation of TROPOMI CO data improves the model CO field in the troposphere. In general the aerosol optical depth has improved globally, but the dust evaluation shows more mixed results. The results of the 47 comparisons are summarised in a score card, which shows that 83 % of the evaluation datasets show a neutral or improved performance of Cy48R1 compared to the previous operational CAMS system, while 17 % indicate a (slight) degradation. This demonstrates the overall success of this upgrade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]