Huge thanks for responding to our call for contributors posted at the beginning of the month. All must-have beta requirements have been completed, so, we've released Drupal 9.0.0-beta1! Drupal 8.9.0-beta1 will be released next week (the week of March 23).

The release of the first betas is a firm deadline for all feature and API additions. Even if an issue is pending in the Reviewed & Tested by the Community (RTBC) queue when the commit freeze for the beta begins, it will be committed to the next minor release only.

• Developers and site owners can begin testing the betas after their release.

• Sites must be on 8.8 or later to update to 9.0.0-beta1. Therefore, we will also provide bugfix releases of 8.8 and 8.7 that resolve known upgrade path criticals, so sites that have not been able to update to 8.8 can test the upgrade.

• Once 8.9.0-beta1 is released, the 9.1.x branch of core will open for development. This branch is where feature and API additions should be made. All outstanding issues filed against 8.9.x will be automatically migrated to 9.1.x.

• Alpha experimental modules have been removed from the 8.9.x and 9.0.x codebases (so their development will continue in 9.1.x only).

• Additional fixes will be committed to 9.0.x under the beta allowed changes policy through the end of the beta phase on April 28.

• The release candidate phase will begin the week of May 4th.

See the summarized key dates in the release cycle, allowed changes during the Drupal 8 and 9 release cycle, and Drupal 8 and 9 backwards compatibility and internal API policy for more information.

Drupal 9.0.0 and Drupal 8.9.0 are both scheduled to be released on June 3, 2020.

Bugfixes and security support of Drupal 8.8 and 8.7

Drupal 8.8 will receive additional bugfix releases through May 4, 2020, and it has security coverage through December 2, 2020. Drupal 8.7 has security coverage until the release of 8.9.0 on June 3.