Roadmap

Disclaimer

This roadmap is intended to provide guidance and does not constitute a contractual commitment. Items that do not make it into a specific version will be shifted to subsequent releases. Priorities may be adjusted or items deprioritized as needed. To ensure compatibility with upcoming changes, we recommend running your tests against the main branch, which remains functional and up-to-date. Additionally, most minor releases are preceded by a release candidate, available two weeks before, which can also be used for testing purposes.

Legend

Priority:
‼️ This item is very important for this release.
❗ Would be great if this item makes it in.
❣️ This is a nice-to-have.

Status:
⏸️ Not yet started.
▶️ On track. On the right path to make it into the release.
⚠️ At risk. There’s a chance this might need to be bumped to the next release.
✅ Done or practically done.

Long-term Releases

Qiskit 2.3

• Add C FFI for building custom transpiler passes
• Work on improving runtime efficiency of transpiler
• Support for synthesis floor planning of abstract blocks

Qiskit 2.2

• Expand C FFI to include:
  • Nested gate definitions
  • Individual transpiler passes
• Work on improving runtime efficiency of transpiler
• Improved infrastructure for context aware synthesis
• Compilation of circuits + observables

Qiskit 2.1

🏁 2.1.0 milestone

• Expand C FFI to include:
  • Circuit construction with standard gates
  • Target representation
  • Transpiler function (to compile circuits for target)
• Expand the target to better support next generation of quantum hardware
• Better layout/routing algorithms for modular hardware with high error links
• Work on improving runtime efficiency of transpiler

Qiskit 2.0

🏁 2.0.0 milestone

• ‼️ Initial support to build Qiskit C FFI as a standalone dynamic library
  • ▶️ Migrate the remaining core data model for circuits to Rust
  • ❗▶️ Rust parameter expressions
  • ‼️▶️ Sparse Observable C API
• ‼️⏸️ Add structures to support deferred timing of dynamic circuits
• Annotated boxes in circuits
  • ‼️▶️ Support boxes
  • ❗⚠️ Support annotation in boxes
• ❣️▶️ Improvements in synthesis with fractional gates
• ❣️ OpenQASM exporters in Rust:
  • ⚠️ QASM3
  • ⏸️ QASM2
• ❣️⚠️ QPY support in Rust
• ‼️▶️ Removal of deprecated code in 1.*

Qiskit 1.4

Important

Qiskit 1.4 is the last minor release of 1.* and will stop having bug-fix support not earlier than 6-months after the release of Qiskit 2.0 (around Aug 2025). 1.4 is the transitional release. Therefore, if no deprecation warnings are raised in 1.4, you are ready to move to 2.0.

🏁 1.4.0 milestone

• No new features
• Minimal deprecation warnings for 2.0 removals and API changes
• The PendingDeprecationWarnings in the circuit library are promoted to DeprecationWarnings

Qiskit 1.3

🏁 1.3.0 milestone (released on Nov 28, 2024)

• Most transpiler passes in Rust
• Oxidized synthesis library
• Circuit library generators in Rust

Qiskit 1.2

🏁 1.2.0 milestone (released on Aug 15, 2024)

• Rust representation of Quantum Circuits
• 10x faster circuit construction with standard gates
• Oxidized synthesis functions
• Improvements to transpiler quality for optimization and layout

Qiskit 0.46

Important

Qiskit 0.46.3 is the last 0.* and reached end-of-life on Sep 27, 2024. Qiskit 0.* is now not supported and moving to a higher version is highly encouraged. In the same direction, qiskit-terra has no updates since then.