This is the release schedule for FreeBSD 9.0. For more information about the release engineering process, please see the Release Engineering section of the web site.
General discussions about the pending release and known issues should be sent to the public freebsd-stable mailing list. MFC requests should be sent to re@FreeBSD.org.
| Action | Expected | Actual | Description |
| Initial release schedule announcement | - | 19 April 2011 | Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule. |
| Release schedule reminder | - | 6 May 2011, 15 June 2011 |
Release Engineers send reminder announcement e-mail to developers with updated schedule. |
| Code freeze begins | 17 July 2011 | 18 July 2011 | Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the head branch will require explicit approval. Certain blanket approvals will be granted for narrow areas of development, documentation improvements, etc. |
| BETA1 | 20 July 2011 | 1 August 2011 | First beta test snapshot. |
| BETA2 | 3 August 2011 | 7 September 2011 | Second beta test snapshot. |
| releng/9.0 branch | 3 August 2011 | 10 November 2011 | Subversion branch created, propagated to CVS; future release engineering proceeds on this branch. |
| BETA3 | 17 August 2011 | 28 September 2011 | Third beta test snapshot. |
| RC1 | 24 August 2011 | 22 October 2011 | First release candidate. |
| RC2 | 31 August 2011 | 17 November 2011 | Second release candidate. |
| RC3 | - | 8 December 2011 | Third release candidate. |
| RELEASE build | 7 September 2011 | 3 January 2012 | 9.0-RELEASE built. |
| RELEASE announcement | - | 12 January 2012 | 9.0-RELEASE press release. |
| Turn over to the secteam | - | 16 February 2012 | RELENG_9_0 branch is handed over to the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the announcement. |