Hi everyone,
In last Monday’s Build-Test-Release working group meeting, the community discussed and agreed upon a plan to delay the cut and final release of Willow.
Typically, the Open edX fall release is “cut” in early October, with a final release to the community in mid December. As a reminder, the “cut” is the date at which we make a pre-release version of the Open edX platform and begin the community testing period, meaning no new code is added after the “cut” - giving us time to both test the release and apply any bug fixes as needed.
Due to both the delay in the Verawood cycle and a number of in-development features the community is working on (check out the Community Release Plan for more details!), we’ve decided to cut the Willow release the first week of January, 2027 (exact date TBD).
We’d also like to accelerate the testing cycle. We’re hoping that the community can band together to commit to exercising the needed Willow tests within the first weeks of January, ensuring we have plenty of time to prepare code fixes as bugs are found - and targeting a mid to late February release date.
We welcome feedback on this plan by Friday, September 4, 2026. Please add any thoughts on this forums thread, post in the #wg-build-test-release Slack channel and/or join the next BTR meeting on September 7 to share your thoughts.