FreeBSD 14.5 Release Process
Introduction
This is the release schedule for FreeBSD 14.5. For more information about the release engineering process, please see the Release Engineering section of the web site.
General discussions about the pending release and known issues should be sent to the public freebsd-stable mailing list.
Schedule
| Action | Expected | Actual | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Initial release schedule announcement |
- |
15 April 2026 |
Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule. |
|
Release schedule reminder |
10 July 2026 |
- |
Release Engineers send reminder announcement e-mail to developers with updated schedule. |
|
Code slush begins |
24 July 2026 |
- |
Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the stable/14 branch will not require explicit approval, however new features should be avoided. |
|
releng/14.5 branch |
7 August 2026 |
- |
releng/14.5 branch created; future release engineering proceeds on this branch. |
|
BETA1 builds begin |
7 August 2026 |
- |
First beta test snapshot. |
|
BETA2 builds begin |
14 August 2026 |
- |
Second beta test snapshot. |
|
BETA3 builds begin |
21 August 2026 |
- |
Third beta test snapshot. |
|
RC1 builds begin |
28 August 2026 |
- |
First release candidate. |
|
RELEASE builds begin |
4 September 2026 |
- |
14.5-RELEASE builds begin. |
|
RELEASE announcement |
8 September 2026 |
- |
14.5-RELEASE press release. |
|
14.4 EoL |
31 December 2026 |
- |
14.4-RELEASE no longer supported. |
|
14.5 EoL |
30 June 2027 |
- |
14.5-RELEASE no longer supported. |
|
stable/14 EoL |
30 November 2028 |
- |
stable/14 no longer supported. |
"*" indicates "as-needed" items.
Additional Information
Last modified on: April 15, 2026 by Colin Percival