With the release of Linux kernel 6.19 earlier today, Linus Torvalds confirmed that the next major kernel series will have a version number bump as Linux 7.0 rather than Linux 6.20.
So there you have it, the Linux 6.x era has ended with today’s Linux 6.19 kernel release, and a new one will begin with Linux 7.0, which is expected in mid-April 2026. The merge window for Linux 7.0 will open tomorrow, February 9th, and the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone is expected on February 22nd, 2026.
“And as people have mostly figured out, I’m getting to the point where I’m being confused by large numbers (almost running out of fingers and toes again), so the next kernel is going to be called 7.0,” said Linus Torvalds in a mailing list announcement.
So… what’s the big potentially breaking change(s) in the new kernel?
The kernel doesn’t use semantic versioning, so it’s just an arbitrary rename from 6.20 to 7.0. We will know the changes when 6.20 / 7.0 is in the -rc phase, which should be soon as 6.19 was just released.
Love that the entire justification is that Linus doesn’t know how to count higher than 20. Lucky for us that he’ll probably retire before we get to version 20.20 because otherwise he’d probably have to just shut the whole project down
Linuy 0.1
I remember when he said if there ever was a Linux 3.0 it would be because he went insane and rewrote the whole thing in Python.
Or we get 1.0.0
Linux 2 : Freax
