As announced in this post, VTK now follows a regular (calendar-based) release plan, but as mentioned in this blog, VTK 10.0 is on the horizon.
Expect a minor release in June 2026 with intermediate patch releases in between, as needed.
Expect a major release in December 2026, see below.
The master and release branches will split one month and a half before the scheduled release date. Please ensure that all feature branches are merged before the split.
A proposed detailed release plan will be announced a few weeks before each release.
Following this schedule, the next planned releases are as follows:
VTK v9.7.0 is planned for June 2026
VTK v10.0.0 is planned for December 2026
As detailed in the blog, VTK 10 will contain a major change, the change of the default rendering backend from OpenGL to WebGPU, but it will be possible to opt-out and use OpenGL rendering.
VTK 9.7.0 will already contain all the WebGPU features required to be able to test this backend, but it will be an opt-in, that we strongly suggest users to test their workflow with.
As this is a major release, we may decide to postpone it dependending on feedback, or even to add another minor release before effectively releasing VTK 10.
Here is the detailed plan for 9.7.0 release (sorry for the delay).
06/22/2026: Release split, no new features will be going into VTK 9.7.0 after this date
06/22/2026 to 07/17/2026: Release candidates are published and tested. Critical bug fixes are integrated into the VTK release branch.
07/17/2026: VTK 9.7.0 is released.
The whole planning is henceforth delayed by a week:
06/27/2026 to 07/24/2026: Release candidates are published and tested. Critical bug fixes are integrated into the VTK release branch.
07/24/2026: VTK 9.7.0 is released.