Go Release Cycle

Schedule

The current cycle is to make a major release every six months.

• Three months of general development.
• Three months of release testing, known as the "feature freeze".

During the freeze, only bug fixes and doc updates are accepted. New work may be permitted by the core team, but only in truly exceptional cases and only if the work was proposed and approved before the cutoff.

The releases fall on Feb 1 and Aug 1, so the schedule is:

• Feb 1: Go 1.x released; work begins on Go 1.x+1
• May 1: Feature freeze for Go 1.x+1
• Aug 1: Go 1.x+1 released; work begins on Go 1.x+2
• Nov 1: Feature freeze for Go 1.x+2

One or more release candidates are cut during the freeze for the community to test before each major release.

Minor releases

Minor releases (e.g., 1.5.x) may be issued in the interim to address critical issues. Unlike major releases, only the fixes for the issues that motivated the release will be cherry-picked.