Thats a general problem with distros, they may be slow to release new versions of software, specially LTS distros like 18.04.
Too bad, as I was hoping to introduce a few more "regular" users to Geany. I won't expect them to build it from sources. Hopefully, 1.36 would find its way to repos soon: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/geany
Yeah, not much Geany can do about distros backport rules, each distro has its own Geany supporter who kindly makes packages that comply with that distros rules, otherwise it wouldn't be available in many at all, since Geany devs have no expertise in packaging.