Release Cycle

The U-Boot projects attempts to maintain a fixed, predictable Release Cycle as follows:

  • We will have U-Boot releases at a fixed release interval of (approximately) every 3 months.

  • Under normal conditions the release date will be the first Monday of the month.

  • Immediately following each release, there will be a “merge window” of normally 21 days, i. e. if the release was on a Monday, then the merge window will close on the Monday in the 3rd week after the release.

    While this merge window is open, new features can be added to the U-Boot source tree. This is further expanded on in the U-Boot Development Process.

  • After the merge window closes, no new features may be added to allow for a release candidate phase which is intended to fix bugs and regressions.

  • To help with late pull requests, the next branch will open when the second release candidate is published.

Note: While we try to adhere to the release schedule, we will not hesitate and take the liberty to delay a release if there are good reasons, for example if there are known bugs or other technical reasons. The code will be released when it is considered ready without caring too much about the announced deadline.

Note 2: Even though we follow Linux ways in many respects, there are differences in the actual procedures, which are documented in the U-Boot Development Process.

Version Numbers

Starting with the release in October 2008, the names of the releases were changed from numerical release numbers without deeper meaning into a time stamp based numbering. Regular releases are now identified by names consisting of the calendar year and month of the release date. Additional fields are frequently used to denote the release candidates. They are also used on rare occasions to note a bug fix release on top of the previous stable release.

Examples:

U-Boot v2009.11       - Release November 2009
U-Boot v2009.11.1     - Bug fix release 1 on top of the November 2009 release
U-Boot v2010.09-rc1   - Release candidate 1 for September 2010 release

Current Status

  • U-Boot v2026.01 was released on Monday, 05 January 2026.

  • The Merge Window for the next release (v2026.04) is closed with the -rc1 release on Monday, 26 January 2026.

  • The next branch is now closed until the -rc2 release on Monday, 09 February 2026.

  • Release “v2026.04” is scheduled for Monday, 06 April 2026.

Future Releases

For the next scheduled release, release candidates were made on:

  • U-Boot v2026.04-rc1 was released on Mon 26 January 2026.

  • U-Boot v2026.04-rc2 was released on Mon 09 February 2026.

  • U-Boot v2026.04-rc3 was released on Mon 23 February 2026.

Please note that the following dates are planned only and may be deviated from as needed.

  • “v2026.04”: end of MW = Mon, Jan 26, 2026; release = Mon, Apr 06, 2026

  • “v2026.07”: end of MW = Mon, Apr 27, 2026; release = Mon, Jul 06, 2026

  • “v2026.10”: end of MW = Mon, Jul 27, 2026; release = Mon, Oct 05, 2026

  • “v2027.01”: end of MW = Mon, Oct 26, 2026; release = Mon, Jan 04, 2027

Previous Releases

Note: these statistics are generated by our fork of gitdm, which was originally created by Jonathan Corbet.