Development Focus ----------------- At this point we should have release candidates (RC1 or recent intermediary release) for all the 2026.1 Gazpacho deliverables. Teams should be working on any release-critical bugs that would require another RC or intermediary release before the final release. Actions ------- Early in the week, the release team will be proposing stable/2026.1 branch creation for all deliverables that have not branched yet, using the latest available 2026.1 Gazpacho release as the branch point. If your team is ready to go for creating that branch, please let us know by leaving a +1 on these patches. If you would like to wait for another release before branching, you can -1 the patch and update it later in the week with the new release you would like to use. By the end of the week the release team will merge those patches though, unless an exception is granted. Once stable/2026.1 branches are created, if a release-critical bug is detected, you will need to fix the issue in the master branch first, then backport the fix to the stable/2026.1 branch before releasing out of the stable/2026.1 branch. After all of the cycle-with-rc projects have branched we will branch devstack, grenade, and the requirements repos. This will effectively open them up for 2026.2 Hibiscus development, though the focus should still be on finishing up 2026.1 Gazpacho until the final release. Opening up the new development cycle is also a good opportunity to teams to revise their zuul jobs and used nodesets and clean up all unnecessary ones. For projects with translations, watch for any translation patches coming through and merge them quickly. A new release should be produced so that translations are included in the final 2026.1 Gazpacho release. Finally, now is a good time to finalize release notes. In particular, consider adding any relevant "prelude" content. Release notes are targetted for the downstream consumers of your project, so it would be great to include any useful information for those that are going to pick up and use or deploy the 2026.1 Gazpacho version of your project. Upcoming Deadlines & Dates -------------------------- Final RC deadline: March 26th, 2026 (R-1 week) Final 2026.1 "Gazpacho" release: April 1st, 2026 2026.2 "Hibiscus" (virtual) PTG: April 20-24, 2026 Előd Illés irc: elodilles @ #openstack-release