U-Boot · Release Calendar

U-Boot Release 2026

by Guodong Xu, Linux kernel developer at Qualcomm

Release Candidate

Stable Release

Merge Window

Twilight Time

Community Meeting

Custodian PRs

Cycle Details

Quarterly releases: January, April, July, October.
Three-week merge window, then an -rc every two weeks.
About 13 weeks per cycle.
Dates follow the published U-Boot schedule.
Future dates are the plan and can slip.

Cadence Rules

Releases per year 4 (quarterly)

Merge window ~3 weeks (21 days)

RC cadence Bi-weekly (14 days)

RCs per cycle 5

Total cycle length ~13 weeks

U-Boot Concepts

Twilight Time: Patches whose V1 was submitted during the merge window remain eligible even if revised versions come during stabilization.
Custodians: Subsystem maintainers who collect and forward patches to the main maintainer.
Meetings: Community meetings held the day after each RC/release (Tuesdays, 9 AM CST).

For meeting time & Google Meet link, see Tom Rini's [ANN] U-Boot vXXXX.XX-rcX released emails on the u-boot mailing list.

QUARTERLY RELEASES: JAN / APR / JUL / OCT