Drupal 8.3.0 release candidate phase
The release candidate phase for the 8.3.0 minor release begins the week of February 27. Starting that week, the 8.3.x branch will be subject to release candidate restrictions, with only critical fixes and certain other limited changes allowed.
8.3.x includes new experimental modules for workflows, layout discovery and field layouts; raises stability of the BigPipe module to stable and the Migrate module to beta; and includes several REST, content moderation, authoring experience, performance, and testing improvements among other things. You can read a detailed list of improvements in the announcements of alpha1 and beta1.
Minor versions may include changes to user interfaces, translatable strings, themes, internal APIs like render arrays and controllers, etc. (See the Drupal 8 backwards compatibility and internal API policy for details.) Developers and site owners should test the release candidate to prepare for these changes.
8.4.x will remain open for new development during the 8.3.x release candidate phase.
Drupal 8.3.0 will be released on April 5th, 2017.
No Drupal 8.2.x or 7.x releases planned
March 1 is also a monthly core patch (bug fix) release window for Drupal 8 and 7, but no patch release is planned. This is also the final bug fix release window for 8.2.x (meaning 8.2.x will not receive further development or support aside from its final security release window on March 15). Sites should plan to update to Drupal 8.3.0 on April 5.
For more information on Drupal core release windows, see the documentation on release timing and security releases, as well as the Drupal core release cycle overview.