It may come as no surprise, but Microsoft won’t release another major update for Windows 10 in 2016. The good news is you can expect two big updates to Microsoft’s latest operating system in 2017.
Microsoft let the information slip in a TechNet blog post published earlier in the week. “Windows 10, version 1607 is our third Windows 10 feature update released,” Microsoft said in the blog post. “Based on feedback from organizations moving to Windows 10, this will be our last feature update for 2016, with two additional feature updates expected in 2017.”
The blog post appears to confirm reports from the Windows rumor mill about the timing of the next two updates for Windows 10. The first update, dubbed Redstone 2, is expected to roll out in early 2017 with the second, Redstone 3, landing in the summer or early fall, similar to the timing of the recently released Anniversary Update (previously known as Redstone 1).
Further reading: The Windows 10 Anniversary Update’s best new features
This schedule would put Microsoft back on a two updates per year schedule similar to the initial rollout of Windows 10, as Windows Central first pointed out. In 2015, Microsoft released Windows 10 (also known as Threshold) in July and then the November Update (dubbed Threshold 2) three months later.
This time around, Redstone 2 is expected to roll out in the spring and then Redstone 3 should hit about four to six months later.
The impact on you at home: Of the two updates, Redstone 2 looks to be the most interesting so far. Not necessarily because of the features, which are believed to be largely things that weren’t ready for the Anniversary Update. The big deal is that the early 2017 update is expected to roll out in concert with new hardware from Microsoft, as ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley first reported back in March.
Early builds of Redstone 2 are expected to roll out to Windows Insiders in the coming weeks.