ServiceNow’s next family release is around the corner. Expected to land in May 2026, the Australia release promises a wealth of “new products and applications, as well as additional features and fixes for existing products”.
With release notes now available, there’s a lot of excitement in the community, especially with the launch of ServiceNow’s first Developer Passport, a week of live sessions hosted by product experts – a great way to get to know the latest release!
Australia Release Key Dates
Australia marks a return to the start of the alphabet, following Zurich in 2025, but for this year, the focus will be on countries rather than cities. With release notes now available to explore, let’s remind ourselves of those key dates as we navigate the world of “Australia”:
- January 2026: Early Release Program
- Mid-February 2026: Release Testing Preview
- Mid-March 2026: Early Availability and Release Notes
- May 2026: General Availability
Early Release Program
As the name suggests, this two-part program gives existing customers the option to upgrade early to a version of the latest family release – a useful opportunity to try out and test new features in their own environment before market launch (GA).
Phase 1 is Release Testing Preview (RTP), which is available at least 60 days prior to General Availability and offers a pre-release version for testing on sub-production instances.
Phase 2 refers to Early Availability (EA), which is available at least 45 days prior to General Availability and offers a production-ready version for upgrade on both sub-production and production environments.
General Availability (GA)
Marking the official end of EA and the early testing phases, GA refers to the final version of the release, with production upgrades made widely available to all customers. For the Australia release, this is expected to happen in May 2026.
ServiceNow offers some handy documentation, including guidance on how to navigate the release notes.
Introducing Developer Passport
There are some great ServiceNow resources to get stuck into, including a week of practical demos, feature deep dives, and Q&As with product experts.
With daily live streams across specific feature areas, it’s well worth checking out the Developer Passport Australia Release Preview, running from March 16-20 – the first of its kind for ServiceNow. Bring your questions!
“Developer Passport is a full week of free, easy-to-access livestreams, each one locked in on a specific feature area: Playbooks, Flows, Experiences, ReleaseOps, Studio & Build Agent. All these streams are led by the product managers who actually built the stuff.”
Are you planning to attend any Developer Passport livestreams? And what are you most excited about for this latest release?
We’ll be sharing community insights from the release notes, so make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter to stay on top of key updates.