Godot release policy

    Godot loosely follows with a versioning system, albeit with an interpretation of each term adapted to the complexity of a game engine:

    • 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.

    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 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 version increment.

    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 was 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.

    In a given minor release series, only the latest patch release receives support. If you experience an issue using an older patch release, please upgrade to the latest patch release of that series and test again before reporting an issue on GitHub.

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

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

    While Godot contributors aren’t working under any deadlines, we strive to publish minor releases relatively frequently, with an average of two 3.x minor releases per year since Godot 3.3.

    As for the upcoming Godot 4.0, as of August 2022, we are aiming for a beta release in Q3 2022, and possibly a stable release by Q4 2022 (but experience has shown time and time again that such estimates tend to be overly optimistic). Follow the Godot blog for the latest updates.