The following release schedule was agreed on at the Homestretch workshop:
- Mid May: finish remaining features and polish user interface (list of tasks on developer.blender.org). These are relatively simple changes to the design, or additions to really complete the new functionality.
- First week of June: developers focuses on updating user manual in their areas of expertise.
- Mid June: fix all high priority bugs. Other bugs may be fixed as well, but bugs marked as high priority are the ones that we consider to block the final release.
- July: 2.80 release
The core development team will focus fully on the priorities for 2.80 in the coming months. Patches will have to wait, and we encourage developers working on new features to get them in a fully polished state so that they can go into the next release.
After 2.80 we will follow a fixed release schedule. That means 2.81 would be released 3 months later. There are many great patches under development or almost ready to be included (for example UDIM), but which would delay the 2.80 release too much.