Now that GNOME 3.18 has been released and it already has a first point release, and many of us GNU/Linux users are starting to upgrade their old GNOME 3.16 desktop environments to the new and improved version, the time has come to learn some information about the next major release, GNOME 3.20.

Therefore, we inform you today, October 20, that the official GNOME 3.20 release schedule has been published on the GNOME Wiki. The development cycle for GNOME 3.20 will have the GNOME 3.19.x version numbering and will start next week, on October 28, with the first milestone, GNOME 3.19.1.

After GNOME 3.19.1, the GNOME 3.19.2 milestone will arrive in November 25, followed by GNOME 3.19.3 in December 16, 2015. The development cycle for GNOME 3.20 will continues in January 20, 2016 with the GNOME 3.19.4 build. Then, the first Beta build of GNOME 3.20 should be available for testing on February 17.

GNOME 3.20 Beta 2 will land on March 2, 2016, followed closely by the Release Candidate (RC) version on March 16. The final release of GNOME 3.20 is currently scheduled for March 23, 2016, but as you might know these dates can change at any time. Please also note that GNOME 3.18.2 will be released on November 11, 2015.

As expected, GNOME 3.20 will include a great number of new features for many of its core components and applications, including the Nautilus (Files) file manger, which will get a brand-new search UI, GTK+, GNOME Calendar, GNOME To Do, and many more, so make sure you follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for updates.