Yes, it is the norm. Tournaments and Layouts are now saved separately. For backwards compatibility, when you load a tournament saved with a previous version, since the saved tournament will have a layout saved with it you will be given the option of loading that layout as well. But tournaments saved with 2.6 will not have the layout saved with them. Thus, loading a tournament saved with 2.6 will only load the tournament and will not give you the option to load the layout (since it was not saved with the tournament).
The final version of 2.6 will give you the option of saving layouts with tournaments (how the software worked before 2.6) or not. This can be controlled on the Preferences tab.