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.
Yes.
I absolutely love semver, but it can lead to absurdly high version numbers (a package that I maintain at work is now at something like 3.1.125). It contains mostly config for other things, so… This is somewhat expected.
I still think it’s better than just naming every version after the year of its release (like 2026.1) or random arbitrary numbers, though
I have a really hard time seeing this as a problem. Why is 125 an “absurd” version number? You’ve presumably done 125 patch versions since the last minor version, so doesn’t it just make sense?
It’s just a number, it doesn’t matter if it’s “high”.
I mean “absurdly high” in the context of the thread where Linus says at about 20 it’s time for a new version.
But in the sense of semver, that’s a completely reasonable version number, assuming you had many small fixes/additions.