Hey all,

This is a quick note to highlight that we've created the REL1_45 branch for MediaWiki core and each of the extensions and skins in Wikimedia git [0]. This is the first step in the release process for MediaWiki 1.45.0, which should be out in late November 2025, approximately six months after MediaWiki 1.44.0.

The branches reflect the code as of the last 'alpha' branch for the release, 1.45.0-wmf.25, which was deployed to Wikimedia wikis on Tuesday, 28 October 2025, for MediaWiki itself and those extensions and skins available there.

From now on, patches that land in the main development branch of MediaWiki and its bundled extensions and skins will be slated for the MediaWiki 1.46 release, unless specifically backported [1].

If you are working on a critical bug fix that will affect the code in the release, once the patch has been merged into the development branch, you should propose it for backporting by cherry-picking to the REL1_45 branch.

If you are working on a new feature, that should now not be backported. If you have an urgent case where the work should block release for everyone else, please file a task against the `mw 1.45-release` project on Phabricator [2].

If you have tickets that are tagged for `mw-1.45-release`, please finish them, untag them, or reach out to get them resolved in the next few days.

We hope to issue the first release candidate, 1.45.0-rc.0, in two weeks' time, and if all goes well, to then release MediaWiki 1.45.0 a few weeks after that.

[0]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bundled_extensions_and_skins

[1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Backporting_fixes

[2]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/mw-1.45-release/

Best regards,