Four release regimes running at the same time
Anyone running four of these six platforms is inside four different release regimes at once, and the next six weeks stack them. Salesforce makes Winter '27 generally available on October 12, 2026. Microsoft retires its Release Planner by November 15, 2026. ServiceNow's Brazil family is arriving now. Workday's 2026R2 has been in tenants since September 19.
Each cadence is easy enough to look up on its own. The collision is what costs teams their October, because the vendors disagree about almost everything a planner needs. Some let you defer and some flatly do not. Some publish dates a year ahead and some publish none.
What follows is where each cycle stands in late September 2026 and what the differences do to a shared release process. Our piece on reading change notes without reading all of them covers the reading problem. This page is about the calendar underneath it.
Microsoft is removing the artefact you planned around
The twice-yearly release wave model is being retired. There is no 2026 release wave 2, and Microsoft Learn states it plainly: "Release Plans will no longer be published starting in September 2026... Existing release plans will remain available for historical reference until further notice." New release plans stopped publishing to Microsoft Learn from September 2026, and the Release Planner itself retires by November 15, 2026.
Early access goes with it. Microsoft has deprecated early access and replaced it with a release channel set per environment, monthly by default, with a semi-annual channel offered instead. Control moves from a wave everyone could read about months ahead to a setting one admin picks per environment.
On deferral Microsoft's documented answer to whether an update can be skipped or postponed is no. Teams that planned a year at a time around wave content need a different horizon now, and the channel setting is the only lever left. We covered the end of release waves when it was announced.
Salesforce publishes the date and will not move it
Salesforce runs three seasonal releases a year and says so in one line: "You'll typically see Spring in February, Summer in June, and Winter in October." Summer '26 is what your users see today. Winter '27 is generally available on October 12, 2026, and that date was published well ahead of the release.
Sandbox timing is the part to check before the weekend. Preview instances were upgraded on August 28 and 29, 2026. Non-preview instances are upgraded on October 9 and 10, 2026, two or three days before general availability, which leaves no usable regression window. Salesforce states the rule that decides which group a sandbox falls into: "The only way to change the upgrade status of a sandbox is to move it to another instance by refreshing it."
Deferral is not on offer. Asked whether the upgrade can be avoided, Salesforce answers "No, automatic upgrades are mandatory as outlined in your Salesforce contract." That flat no, sitting alongside Microsoft's, is the most planning-relevant fact on this page. Two of your six calendars are fixed for you, and the only thing left to negotiate is your own readiness. Our note on the Winter '27 preview window has the instance detail.
ServiceNow moves the support boundary when a family lands
ServiceNow ships two release families a year, and each new one quietly changes what is supported. The published upgrade policy says "The current policy of ServiceNow is to support the most recent and the immediately previous release families". Brazil release notes are published, with pages stamped "Updated September 23, 2026", and the available-versions page records a release type of "Feature Early Availability" with a release date of "2026/09/24".
Early Availability is the wording ServiceNow's own documentation uses, and we are repeating it rather than firming it up. The previous family is Australia, whose feature release was dated 2026/03/12 with patches running roughly monthly through 2026/09/10. We are giving no Australia general availability date, because the one repeated around the web shows up only on third-party blogs.
For a platform owner the consequence that matters is the support window rather than the feature list. Two families back stops being supported once the new one lands, so an instance still running the family before Australia has a support problem before it has a feature problem. Our read of the Brazil notes covers what changed.
SAP ships continuously and Oracle tells you privately
SAP BTP has continuous production releases rather than a named cycle anyone can diary. Standard updates land biweekly, urgent fixes land immediately, and major upgrades happen up to four times per year. On warning, SAP says "We let you know about these upgrades 4 weeks in advance." Four weeks is the whole planning horizon for the largest changes.
There is a gap in the documentation we could not close. A full-text search of SAP's published BTP documentation found no platform-wide service-retirement notice period. If your architecture leans on one BTP service staying available, the notice period is a contract question for your account team rather than a documented one.
Oracle NetSuite goes further in the other direction. There are two major releases a year, named by year and number. The current one is 2026.2 and the next is 2027.1, which is named in the documentation with no published date attached. Oracle publishes no global release calendar dates, so your own upgrade date reaches you through a portlet on your production home page. Rescheduling is available to every service tier, which makes NetSuite the one platform here where the date is unpublished and moveable at the same time.
Workday ships the features switched off
Workday runs two feature releases a year, R1 in March and R2 in September. 2026R2 went live on Saturday September 19, 2026. We could only confirm that date on a customer institution's public page rather than on anything Workday owns, which matters if you are relying on a date somebody forwarded you. We are also not repeating the second Saturday rule that circulates, because September 19 was the third Saturday.
The preparation window is five weeks, and no Workday source states a deferral deadline. Features arrive mostly disabled by default, which changes the shape of the risk. A Microsoft or Salesforce release makes you ask what might break. A Workday release makes you ask what nobody has switched on.
The Workday risk is capability sitting unused rather than something breaking. That failure is quiet, it never pages anyone, and it surfaces nine months later when a director asks why the thing promised in a roadmap session is still not live. The R1, R2 and weekly update cadence is the piece to read next to this one.
Run one calendar even though you cannot run one process
A team spread across four of these platforms cannot run one release process. The vendors disagree on deferral, on notice, on whether capability arrives on or off, and on whether a public date exists at all. Any process general enough to cover all six is too vague to help inside any one of them.
One calendar is achievable, and that is the thing worth building. Put on it every window that is not yours to move. The Salesforce general availability date. The Microsoft Release Planner retirement. The ServiceNow family arrival and what it does to your supported pair. The Workday five-week preparation window. The four-week SAP warning, which you cannot diary ahead but can react to on a known clock. Against each entry, record whether deferral is possible, because the answer differs by vendor.
NetSuite needs a person rather than a date, since the only place your upgrade date exists is a portlet on your own production home page and somebody has to go and look. Give that a named owner the same way the others get a named date.
For the next six weeks the work is short. Before October 12, confirm which Salesforce sandbox sits on a preview instance. Before November 15, pull what you still need out of the Release Planner and set the release channel on each Microsoft environment deliberately. This week, read your NetSuite upgrade date off the portlet, check whether any ServiceNow instance sits outside the supported pair, and ask your Workday leads which 2026R2 features they have actually enabled since September 19. Put all six answers on one page beside your release checklist for shared solutions, where the change board can see it.
