Godot release policy

Godot’s release policy is in constant evolution. What is described below is intended to give a general idea of what to expect, but what will actually happen depends on the choices of core contributors, and the needs of the community at a given time.

Godot versioning

Godot loosely follows Semantic Versioning with a major.minor.patch versioning system, albeit with an interpretation of each term adapted to the complexity of a game engine:

• The major version is incremented when major compatibility breakages happen which imply significant porting work to move projects from one major version to another.

  For example, porting Godot projects from Godot 2.1 to Godot 3.0 required running the project through a conversion tool, and then performing a number of further adjustments manually for what the tool could not do automatically.

• The minor version is incremented for feature releases which do not break compatibility in a major way. Minor compatibility breakage in very specific areas may happen in minor versions, but the vast majority of projects should not be affected or require significant porting work.

  The reason for this is that as a game engine, Godot covers many areas such as rendering, physics, scripting, etc., and fixing bugs or implementing new features in a given area may sometimes require changing the behavior of a feature, or modifying the interface of a given class, even if the rest of the engine API remains backwards compatible.

Tip

Upgrading to a new minor version is therefore recommended for all users, but some testing is necessary to ensure that your project still behaves as expected in a new minor version.

• The patch version is incremented for maintenance releases which focus on fixing bugs and security issues, implementing new requirements for platform support, and backporting safe usability enhancements. Patch releases are backwards compatible.

  Patch versions may include minor new features which do not impact the existing API, and thus have no risk of impacting existing projects.

Tip

Updating to new patch versions is therefore considered safe and strongly recommended to all users of a given stable branch.

We call major.minor combinations stable branches. Each stable branch starts with a major.minor release (without the 0 for patch) and is further developed for maintenance releases in a Git branch of the same name (for example patch updates for the 3.3 stable branch are developed in the 3.3 Git branch).

Note

As mentioned in the introduction, Godot’s release policy is evolving, and earlier Godot releases may not have followed the above rules to the letter. In particular, the 3.2 stable branch received a number of new features in 3.2.2 which would have warranted a minor version increment.

Release support timeline

Stable branches are supported at minimum until the next stable branch is released and has received its first patch update. In practice, we support stable branches on a best effort basis for as long as they have active users who need maintenance updates.

Whenever a new major version is released, we make the previous stable branch a long-term supported release, and do our best to provide fixes for issues encountered by users of that branch who cannot port complex projects to the new major version. This is the case for the 2.1 branch, and will be the case for the latest 3.x stable branch by the time Godot 4.0 is released.

Legend: Full support – Partial support – No support (end of life) – Development version

Pre-release Godot versions aren’t intended to be used in production and are provided for testing purposes only.

When is the next release out?

While Godot contributors aren’t working under any deadlines, we have historically had one major or minor release per year, with several maintenance updates between each.

Starting with Godot 3.3, we aim to accelerate our development cycles for minor releases, so you can expect a new minor release every 3 to 6 months.

Maintenance (patch) releases will be released as needed with potentially very short development cycles, to provide users of the current stable branch with the latest bug fixes for their production needs.

As for the upcoming Godot 4.0, we can only say that we aim for a 2021 release, but any closer estimate is likely to be hard to uphold. Alpha builds will be published as soon as the main features for Godot 4.0 are finalized.