Besides replacing Developer Previews, the Android 17 Beta cycle is operating on a faster release schedule.
The continuous Android Canary channel introduced last year has replaced Developer Previews. Last cycle, we had two DPs in November and December, with the first Beta in January.
Despite the late start, Android 17 looks to be getting a stable launch in June 2026. That’s when the next opt-out without a data wipe is coming.
In March, the next beta will bring the Platform Stability milestone that offers final SDK/NDK APIs and largely final app-facing behaviors.
We’re going to be moving quickly from this Beta to our Platform Stability milestone, targeted for March.
Compared to previous cycles, Google is being less firm about what other betas are coming. The graphic and “About” page usually indicate how many releases are coming. There’s just “Later Beta releases” this year.
- Beta 1: Initial beta-quality release, over-the-air update to developers and early adopters who enroll in Android Beta.
- Later Beta releases: Incremental Beta-quality release
That said, we’d expect April and May releases for a total of three major releases that align with the QPR (Quarterly Platform Release) cycle.
Android 17
Android 16
Google acknowledged that there will be a 26Q3 (presumably called “17 QPR1”) release and bigger 26Q4 (“17 QPR2”) update, with 27Q1 (“17 QPR3”) rounding things out. One thing to note is how several posts this week referred to releases using that year-quarter nomenclature that’s arguably a bit more descriptive than QPR[x].
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