Android 16 Release Date Has Already Leaked and It’s Much Earlier than We Thought

Android 16 will launch much sooner in an effort to shift from a yearly to a bi-yearly rollout. Although we already know Android 16’s dessert name and some upcoming features, the exact release date was still unknown.

Folks at Android Headlines claim that Android 16 could release on June 3, 2025. Also, unlike Android 15, which rolled out much later after hitting AOSP, Android 16 will be released on the same day on both AOSP and Google Pixels.

This is much sooner than we had anticipated. The main reason Google highlighted for switching to point releases is to push out AI features to Android devices quickly. The company wants to get OEMs onboard and push it to devices till fall. This is to make sure devices launching from July could come with Android 16 out-of-the-box.

The other reason, of course, could be due to new Pixels which will also launch a couple of months prior to compete with iPhones and have them run a much more stable version of Android with only a few bugs.

The early launch also makes sense considering the Pixel 10 series with the new Tensor G5 SoC will also launch at least two months prior. The next flagship Pixel should come with Android 16 which didn’t happen with Pixel 9 and Android 15. However, since the Pixel 9a is also launching sooner than the previous year, it will still launch with Android 15.

Here’s what the schedule for Android 16 and the point release looks like for the year 2025. Android 16 stable is coming in Q2 (June) whereas the point release (Android 16.1, maybe?), will release around the latter part of the year. Android 16 is getting an SDK bump, but not the point release. Q1 and Q3 will probably see QPR updates and incremental features.

What are your thoughts on Google bumping the Android 16 release date and moving to point releases? Let us know in the comments below.