"The Blender 2.8 development phase saw the formalization of a 4-release-per-year schedule, with one of the releases providing long-term support (LTS) for users. While frequent releases can facilitate rapid iteration and continuous improvements, feedback from developers and users has prompted a proposal to reduce the number of releases to 3 per year (one of which will be LTS).
Each release involves significant overhead, including documentation, release notes, coordinating builds and tests, and overlapping development phases (Bcon3/Bcon1). Reducing the number of releases by one each year will help alleviate this overhead, while still allowing new features and improvements to be integrated into the software in a timely manner."
"Announcing the Updated Release Schedule"
"2023 will serve as a transitional period for implementing the new release schedule."
- "Blender 3.5 is on track for its expected release at the end of March, and will proceed as planned.
- Blender 3.6 will follow the previous release schedule, but will now serve as an LTS version. It is expected to be released in July, with support continuing until July 2025.
- Blender 3.7 will be skipped entirely.
- Blender 4.0 will adopt the new release schedule and include an additional two weeks of Bcon1 to accommodate more significant changes. It is expected to be released in late November."
"Our objective is to achieve the following:"
"Our aim is to deliver a new LTS release every year, which will be supported for two years, much like the current schedule. This new LTS version will be released at approximately the same time every year.
In addition, we plan to have a major version and breaking release every 2 years (such as 3.0, 4.0, 5.0...)."
