Kimi K3 Release Date: Launched July 16, 2026

Kimi K3 was officially released on July 16, 2026. Moonshot AI announced its 2.8-trillion-parameter flagship with a full launch — model live in the Kimi app, API access, the Kimi Work desktop app, and the Kimi Code CLI all available on day one.

Kimi K3 release timeline

Date	Milestone
July 16, 2026	Kimi K3 officially launched — live in Kimi app, kimi.com, API, Kimi Work, and Kimi Code
July 16, 2026	Official benchmark suite published on Moonshot’s blog
July 19, 2026	Independent rankings land: #4 of 189 models on Artificial Analysis (score 57)
July 27, 2026	Open weights scheduled for release under a Modified MIT license

What was available at launch

Unlike many AI launches that trickle out access over weeks, K3’s release was wide from day one:

• Kimi app & kimi.com — free access for everyone (iOS, Android, HarmonyOS, web)
• Kimi Work — the PC desktop app for Windows and Apple silicon
• Kimi API — kimi-k3 live on platform.moonshot.ai with OpenAI-compatible endpoints
• Kimi Code — terminal/IDE agent with K3 selectable via /model

Alongside the model, Moonshot launched a referral program: new users who sign up through an invite link get bonus membership credits — up to a full year free.

The pre-launch rumors: what was right?

In the weeks before launch, “Kimi K3 release date” and even “Kimi K3 release odds” were trending searches as leaks circulated. Here’s how the rumor mill scored:

Correct:

• A mid-July 2026 launch window ✓
• A trillion-parameter-scale MoE architecture ✓
• Open weights following shortly after launch ✓

Wrong (or undersold):

• Most leaks predicted ~1.5T parameters — the real model is 2.8T
• Few predicted the 1M-token context window with 6.3× faster long-context decoding
• Nobody had the Kimi Delta Attention + Attention Residuals architecture on their bingo card

The lesson: Moonshot kept the genuinely important details — the architecture — completely quiet until launch day.

What’s next after release

The biggest remaining date is July 27, 2026, when K3’s weights go public under a Modified MIT license. That will make K3 the largest open-weight model ever released — nearly 3× the size of K2’s 1.0T. Expect a wave of fine-tunes, quantizations, and third-party benchmarks in the weeks that follow.

For full technical details on what launched, see Kimi K3 specifications explained, or start from the complete Kimi K3 guide.

FAQ

Is Kimi K3 out now? Yes. It launched July 16, 2026 and is available free in the Kimi app and on kimi.com, plus API, desktop, and CLI access.

When do Kimi K3 open weights come out? July 27, 2026, under a Modified MIT license.

Was there a Kimi K3 release delay? No — K3 shipped inside the mid-July window that had been rumored, with all four access channels live on day one.

Is “Kimi 3.0” the same as Kimi K3? Yes — “Kimi 3.0” is just the popular search term. The official name is Kimi K3.