AI Model Releases Timeline: Latest Launches with Dates

AI Model Releases 2026 Timeline

A chronological timeline of major AI model releases across 2025 and 2026 — LLMs, reasoning models, open-weights families, and image & video generators, each with its date, why it mattered, and the official announcement.

Last updated September 10, 2026 · refreshed automatically from the OpenRouter models API

Newest model launches — live

Every new model on the OpenRouter API (GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and 300+ more) appears here automatically with its exact launch date, plus trending open-weights releases from Hugging Face.

Compiled automatically from the OpenRouter models API · last refreshed September 10, 2026.

Sep 8, 2026 · Inception

Inception: Mercury 2.5
API launch
New on the Inception API — 260,000-token context — $0.04 in / $0.15 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $10.00 in / $50.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra (batch)
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra Pro
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $10.00 in / $50.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra Pro (batch)
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 3, 2026 · Qwen

Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
API launch
New on the Qwen API — 1,000,000-token context — $2.00 in / $6.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 2, 2026 · Google

Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash
API launch
New on the Google API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.75 in / $3.75 out per million tokens.
Sep 2, 2026 · Google

Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash (batch)
API launch
New on the Google API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.38 in / $1.88 out per million tokens.

API reference — every 2026 frontier model, ready to paste

Model IDs, context windows and per-million token prices verified against the OpenRouter models API on July 29, 2026. "API since" is first public API availability, which is often earlier than the marketing announcement.

Model	Model ID	Context	$/M in	$/M out	API since
Claude Opus 5	`anthropic/claude-opus-5`	1,000,000	$5.00	$25.00	Jul 24, 2026
Gemini 3.6 Flash	`google/gemini-3.6-flash`	1,048,576	$1.50	$7.50	Jul 21, 2026
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite	`google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite`	1,048,576	$0.30	$2.50	Jul 21, 2026
GPT-5.6 Sol	`openai/gpt-5.6-sol`	1,050,000	$5.00	$30.00	Jul 9, 2026
GPT-5.6 Terra	`openai/gpt-5.6-terra`	1,050,000	$1.25	$7.50	Jul 9, 2026
GPT-5.6 Luna	`openai/gpt-5.6-luna`	1,050,000	$0.50	$3.00	Jul 9, 2026
Grok 4.5	`x-ai/grok-4.5`	500,000	$2.00	$6.00	Jul 8, 2026
Claude Sonnet 5	`anthropic/claude-sonnet-5`	1,000,000	$2.00	$10.00	Jun 30, 2026
Claude Fable 5	`anthropic/claude-fable-5`	1,000,000	$10.00	$50.00	Jun 9, 2026
Claude Haiku 4.5	`anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5`	200,000	$1.00	$5.00	Oct 15, 2025
GPT-5 nano	`openai/gpt-5-nano`	400,000	$0.05	$0.40	Aug 7, 2025

Cheapest frontier-adjacent tier per vendor as of this date: OpenAI gpt-5.6-luna ($0.50/$3.00), Google gemini-3.5-flash-lite ($0.30/$2.50), Anthropic claude-haiku-4.5 ($1.00/$5.00). For high-volume classification work gpt-5-nano remains an order of magnitude cheaper than any 2026 launch.

Machine-readable: this page's release feed is available as JSON at /tools/ai-releases — date, name, kind, summary and link per release, refreshed from provider APIs.

Curated timeline of major releases

Hand-curated sections, plus API launches compiled automatically

September 2026 — latest AI model releases

Newest first. Dates are first public API availability, compiled automatically from the OpenRouter models API.

Sep 8, 2026 · Inception

Inception: Mercury 2.5
API launch
New on the Inception API — 260,000-token context — $0.04 in / $0.15 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $10.00 in / $50.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra (batch)
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra Pro
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $10.00 in / $50.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 4, 2026 · OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra Pro (batch)
API launch
New on the OpenAI API — 1,050,000-token context — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 3, 2026 · Qwen

Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
API launch
New on the Qwen API — 1,000,000-token context — $2.00 in / $6.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 2, 2026 · Google

Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash
API launch
New on the Google API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.75 in / $3.75 out per million tokens.
Sep 2, 2026 · Google

Google: Gemini 3.8 Flash (batch)
API launch
New on the Google API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.38 in / $1.88 out per million tokens.
Sep 1, 2026 · Anthropic

Anthropic: Claude Fable 5.1
API launch
New on the Anthropic API — 1,000,000-token context — $10.00 in / $50.00 out per million tokens.
Sep 1, 2026 · Anthropic

Anthropic: Claude Fable 5.1 (batch)
API launch
New on the Anthropic API — 1,000,000-token context — $5.00 in / $25.00 out per million tokens.

Also shipped via API this month

Aug 28, 2026 · Tencent

Tencent: Hy4 preview
API launch
New on the Tencent API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.83 in / $2.50 out per million tokens.
Aug 26, 2026 · Qwen

Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash
API launch
New on the Qwen API — 1,000,000-token context — $0.15 in / $0.47 out per million tokens.
Aug 26, 2026 · Zhipu AI

Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash
API launch
New on the Zhipu AI API — 1,310,720-token context — $0.08 in / $0.25 out per million tokens.
Aug 26, 2026 · Zhipu AI

Z.ai: GLM 5.3 Flash (batch)
API launch
New on the Zhipu AI API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.08 in / $0.25 out per million tokens.
Aug 21, 2026 · DeepSeek

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp
API launch
New on the DeepSeek API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.22 in / $0.66 out per million tokens.
Aug 21, 2026 · DeepSeek

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch)
API launch
New on the DeepSeek API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.11 in / $0.33 out per million tokens.
Aug 20, 2026 · Tencent

Tencent: Hy-MT2-1.8B
API launch
New on the Tencent API — 8,192-token context — $0.04 in / $0.18 out per million tokens.
Aug 20, 2026 · Tencent

Tencent: Hy-MT2-30B-A3B
API launch
New on the Tencent API — 8,192-token context — $0.07 in / $0.30 out per million tokens.
Aug 19, 2026 · Tencent

Tencent: Hy-MT2-7B
API launch
New on the Tencent API — 8,192-token context — $0.07 in / $0.30 out per million tokens.
Aug 18, 2026 · Zhipu AI

Z.ai: GLM 5.3
API launch
New on the Zhipu AI API — 1,310,720-token context — $1.40 in / $4.40 out per million tokens.
Aug 18, 2026 · Zhipu AI

Z.ai: GLM 5.3 (batch)
API launch
New on the Zhipu AI API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.70 in / $2.20 out per million tokens.
Aug 14, 2026 · Qwen

Qwen: Qwen3.8 27B
API launch
New on the Qwen API — 1,000,000-token context — $0.42 in / $3.00 out per million tokens.
Aug 13, 2026 · Google

Google: Gemini 3.7 Flash
API launch
New on the Google API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.75 in / $3.75 out per million tokens.
Aug 13, 2026 · Google

Google: Gemini 3.7 Flash (batch)
API launch
New on the Google API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.38 in / $1.88 out per million tokens.
Aug 12, 2026 · Qwen

Qwen: Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B
API launch
New on the Qwen API — 1,048,576-token context — $2.00 in / $6.00 out per million tokens.
Aug 12, 2026 · Qwen

Qwen: Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B (batch)
API launch
New on the Qwen API — 1,010,000-token context — $2.00 in / $6.00 out per million tokens.
Aug 12, 2026 · DeepSeek

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813
API launch
New on the DeepSeek API — 1,048,576-token context — $1.05 in / $3.15 out per million tokens.
Aug 12, 2026 · DeepSeek

DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (batch)
API launch
New on the DeepSeek API — 1,048,576-token context — $0.66 in / $1.98 out per million tokens.
Aug 12, 2026 · xAI

SpaceXAI: Grok 4.6
API launch
New on the xAI API — 500,000-token context — $2.00 in / $6.00 out per million tokens.
Aug 11, 2026 · NVIDIA

NVIDIA: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
API launch
New on the NVIDIA API — 262,144-token context — $0.08 in / $0.20 out per million tokens.

August 2026 — latest AI model releases

Newest first. Dates for API-first launches reflect first public API availability; official announcements linked where published.

Aug 13, 2026 · Google DeepMind

Gemini 3.7 Flash
Multimodal
A coding and agent workhorse shipped three weeks after 3.6 Flash, continuing Google's fast Flash cadence.
Aug 12, 2026 · xAI

Grok 4.6
Frontier LLM
xAI's 500k-context flagship for long-running agentic work, succeeding Grok 4.5 a month after launch.
Aug 6, 2026 · OpenAI

GPT-5.6 Luna to free tier · Sol retune
Product update
Luna became the ChatGPT free-tier default, and Sol was retuned for Plus/Pro with a "thinking slider" that exposes reasoning-effort control.
Aug 5, 2026 · Meta

Muse Spark 1.2 & Muse Code
LLM · Coding agent
Spark 1.2 brings a 1M-token context with context compaction and parallel tool calls; Muse Code, in beta, is a multi-agent coding harness with observable event logs.
Aug 4, 2026 · Black Forest Labs

FLUX 3 Video
Video gen
General availability after the Jul 23 gated launch: clips up to 20 seconds with native audio and dialogue, 720p native with 1080p via upscaling.
Aug 4, 2026 · Liquid AI

LFM2.5-2.6B
Open weights
Compact 2.6B-parameter model aimed at on-device use.
Aug 3, 2026 · Alibaba

Qwen3.8-Max
Frontier LLM
2.4T-parameter MoE flagship with ~95B active parameters and a 1M context window, hosted via Qwen Studio and QwenCloud at launch; open weights promised the following week.

July 2026

Dates for API-first launches reflect first public API availability (via OpenRouter); official announcements linked where published.

Jul 24, 2026 · Anthropic

Claude Opus 5
Frontier LLM
The Claude 5 generation's heavyweight tier, succeeding Opus 4.8 at the top of the general-availability lineup.
Jul 21, 2026 · Google DeepMind

Gemini 3.6 Flash & 3.5 Flash Lite
Multimodal
Two fast Gemini tiers shipped the same day: 3.6 Flash for general throughput work and 3.5 Flash Lite for the cheapest per-token tier.
Jul 9, 2026 · OpenAI

GPT-5.6 — Sol, Luna & Terra
Frontier LLM
OpenAI's three-track GPT-5.6 line (each with standard and Pro tiers) landed on the API with a 1M-token context window, after a limited preview from Jun 27.
Jul 8, 2026 · xAI

Grok 4.5
Frontier LLM
xAI's coding-focused Grok 4 successor, shipping with a 500k-token context window.

June 2026

Jun 30, 2026 · Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 5
LLM
The Claude 5 generation's fast general-purpose workhorse, succeeding Sonnet 4.5 with a 1M-token context window.
Jun 30, 2026 · Google DeepMind

Gemini 3.1 Flash line (Nano Banana 2)
Multimodal
Fast Gemini 3.1 tier including the Nano Banana 2 image-generation models.
Jun 16, 2026 · Zhipu AI

GLM-5.2
Open weights
Open-weights flagship that topped Hugging Face trending and runs on surprisingly modest hardware.
Jun 9, 2026 · Anthropic

Claude Fable 5 & Mythos 5
Frontier LLM
A new Mythos-class tier above Opus. Fable 5 reached the API on Jun 9 and all Max plans on Jul 20; Mythos 5 shares the same underlying model without the added dual-use safety measures and is limited to approved organizations.

Earlier in 2026

Entries whose exact launch date we have not verified against a primary source are grouped here rather than given a date we cannot support.

2026 · Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.8
LLM
Capstone upgrade of the Claude 4 line, adding a fast mode for quicker output at full Opus quality.
Apr 2026 · Alibaba

Qwen3.6
Open weights
Successor to Qwen3.5 (March 2026), continuing Alibaba's fast open-weights release cadence.
Apr 2026 · Mistral AI

Mistral Small 3.2
Open weights
Compact update to the Small line, following the Voxtral TTS release in March 2026.
Mar 2026 · Meta

Llama 4 Scout
Open weights
Mixture-of-experts entry in the Llama 4 line.
Feb 2026 · Google DeepMind

Gemma 3
Open weights
Open-weights Gemma refresh with vision capability across every size in the family.

December 2025

Dec 2, 2025 · Mistral AI

Mistral 3
Open weights
Mistral's open-weights frontier family — Mistral Large 3 plus compact dense models — released under Apache 2.0.

November 2025

Nov 25, 2025 · Black Forest Labs

FLUX.2
Image gen
Production-grade image generation and editing with multi-reference support and up-to-4MP output.
Nov 24, 2025 · Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.5
LLM
Reclaimed the top of the coding benchmarks at roughly a third of Opus 4.1's API price.
Nov 18, 2025 · Google DeepMind

Gemini 3 Pro
Frontier LLM
Google's strongest reasoning model at launch, with Deep Think mode and generative UI in the Gemini app.
Nov 12, 2025 · OpenAI

GPT-5.1
LLM
GPT-5 refresh with Instant and Thinking variants and adaptive reasoning depth per query.

October 2025

Oct 15, 2025 · Anthropic

Claude Haiku 4.5
Small LLM
Small-model tier matching Sonnet 4's coding ability at about a third of the cost and twice the speed.
Oct 15, 2025 · Google DeepMind

Veo 3.1
Video gen
Video model update with richer audio, reference-image control, and scene extension in Flow.

September 2025

Sep 30, 2025 · OpenAI

Sora 2
Video gen
Video generation with synchronized audio, launched alongside the invite-only Sora social app.
Sep 29, 2025 · Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 4.5
LLM
The mid-tier model leapfrogged Opus 4.1 on SWE-bench and sustained 30-hour autonomous agent runs.
Sep 29, 2025 · DeepSeek

DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp
Open weights
Introduced DeepSeek Sparse Attention and cut API prices roughly in half.

August 2025

Aug 7, 2025 · OpenAI

GPT-5
Frontier LLM
OpenAI's flagship: a router blending fast and reasoning models, rolled out to every ChatGPT tier including free.
Aug 5, 2025 · OpenAI

gpt-oss
Open weights
OpenAI's first open-weights release since GPT-2: 120B and 20B reasoning models under Apache 2.0.
Aug 5, 2025 · Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.1
LLM
Incremental Opus upgrade focused on agentic coding, reaching 74.5% on SWE-bench Verified.

July 2025

Jul 9, 2025 · xAI

Grok 4
Frontier LLM
Frontier model trained on the Colossus cluster, topping Humanity's Last Exam at launch.

June 2025

Jun 10, 2025 · Mistral AI

Magistral
Reasoning
Europe's first reasoning models — open-weights Small and enterprise Medium — with transparent chain-of-thought.

May 2025

May 29, 2025 · Black Forest Labs

FLUX.1 Kontext
Image gen
In-context image editing family: modify images with text prompts while preserving characters and style.
May 22, 2025 · Anthropic

Claude Opus 4 & Sonnet 4
Frontier LLM
The Claude 4 generation debut, built for long-horizon agent work and topping SWE-bench at release.
May 20, 2025 · Google DeepMind

Veo 3
Video gen
First mainstream video generator with native synchronized audio — dialogue, sound effects, and music.

April 2025

Apr 29, 2025 · Alibaba

Qwen3
Open weights
Hybrid thinking/non-thinking family from 0.6B dense to 235B MoE, released under Apache 2.0.
Apr 16, 2025 · OpenAI

o3 & o4-mini
Reasoning
Reasoning models that use every ChatGPT tool — browsing, Python, vision — inside the chain of thought.
Apr 5, 2025 · Meta

Llama 4 Scout & Maverick
Open weights
Meta's first mixture-of-experts Llamas, natively multimodal with a 10M-token context window on Scout.

March 2025

Mar 25, 2025 · Google DeepMind

Gemini 2.5 Pro
Frontier LLM
Thinking-by-default model that took the top LMArena spot with a 1M-token context window.

February 2025

Feb 27, 2025 · OpenAI

GPT-4.5
LLM
OpenAI's largest non-reasoning model ("Orion") — broader world knowledge and fewer hallucinations.
Feb 24, 2025 · Anthropic

Claude 3.7 Sonnet
LLM
First hybrid-reasoning Claude with visible extended thinking, launched alongside Claude Code.
Feb 17, 2025 · xAI

Grok 3
LLM
Trained on a 200k-GPU cluster, shipping Think mode and DeepSearch.

January 2025

Jan 20, 2025 · DeepSeek

DeepSeek-R1
Reasoning · Open weights
Open-weights reasoning model matching OpenAI o1 at a fraction of the price — the release that triggered a $600B Nvidia sell-off.

FAQ

What is the newest AI model?

The live tracker at the top of this page is rebuilt every day from the OpenRouter models API, so it always names the newest models available to developers, with their exact first-availability dates. The month sections below carry the same releases in chronological order.

What are the latest GPT and Claude models?

OpenAI's latest flagship line is GPT-5.6 — the Sol, Luna and Terra tracks launched in July 2026, with Luna becoming the ChatGPT free-tier default in August. Anthropic's latest is the Claude 5 family — Opus 5, Fable 5, Mythos 5, and Sonnet 5 — which succeeded the Claude 4 line (Opus 4/4.1/4.5/4.8, Sonnet 4/4.5, Haiku 4.5).

How often do new AI models release?

Major labs ship a new flagship roughly every 6–12 months, with point upgrades every few weeks to months. In practice a significant model now lands almost every month: 2025 alone saw 25+ notable releases across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, Alibaba, Mistral, and xAI.

What is a frontier model?

A frontier model is one at or near the state of the art, pushing the boundary of capability in reasoning, coding, or multimodality. Current examples include Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.1, and Gemini 3 Pro. Frontier models are typically closed-weights; open-weights alternatives like DeepSeek, Qwen, and Llama usually follow within months.