AI video releases and shutdowns in 2026: one dated timeline
Twelve dated events from Google, Luma, Runway, OpenAI and ElevenLabs, January to October 2026, each taken from a vendor page read on 2026-10-03.

Between January and October 2026 the vendor pages we read list at least twelve dated launches, deprecations and shutdowns across video, voice and ad tooling. The table below puts them in one order so you can see how often a model id you depend on changes under you.
| Date | Vendor | Event |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2026 | Luma | Ray3.14: native 1080p, listed as 4x faster and 3x cheaper |
| Mar 31 | Veo 3.1 Lite announced | |
| Jun 2026 | Luma | Ray3.2 with frame-by-frame direction |
| Jun 15 | Veo and Imagen 4 deprecations announced, shutdowns Jun 30 and Aug 17 | |
| Jun 30 | Gemini Omni Flash public preview | |
| Aug 2026 | Luma | Scenes: storyboard review before render |
| Aug 27 | Gemini Omni Flash GA | |
| Sep 17 | Runway | Enhance frame rate, Max plans and above |
| Sep 22 | Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS GA | |
| Sep 24 | OpenAI | Sora API shut down |
| Sep 28 | ElevenLabs | Eleven v4 introduced |
| Oct 1 | Luma | Variants live for resizing and translating static ads |
What the sequence shows
Three patterns are visible without any outside data.
- Google moved a video model from preview to GA in 58 days, and announced two shutdowns with only 15 and 63 days between notice and cutoff.
- Luma shipped model or workflow releases in January, June, August and October.
- A shutdown can arrive with no direct replacement. OpenAI's guide states the Sora API ended on September 24 with no direct replacement API.
How to use a timeline like this
Keep your own copy with one extra column: which of your jobs call each id. Then a deprecation notice becomes a query instead of a search. On Sume, model ids are bare catalog ids such as seedance-2.5 or gemini-omni-flash-1.1, and each poll response reports the model that ran, so a log of job id plus model id is enough to find affected outputs.
Before you adopt anything from the table, read the vendor page again. Dates and limits on launch-week pages change, and this list reflects what the pages showed on October 3, 2026. The catalog endpoint documented in Video generation lists what is callable on Sume today.
Reading the dates against your own release plan
A useful exercise is to lay your own roadmap over the table. If you shipped a feature in June on a Google preview, the deprecation notice of June 15 and the Omni preview of June 30 landed inside the same month. If you built on Sora, the Sora API cutoff of September 24 fell four days before ElevenLabs introduced Eleven v4, which is the sort of overlap that stretches a small team.
Cadence also matters for budgeting engineering time. Four Luma releases in ten months, three Google video or voice milestones in twelve weeks, and two shutdowns announced together mean a fixed, recurring cost of re-testing. Plan for it the way you plan for dependency upgrades: a calendar slot, an owner and a standing smoke test.
None of this ranks the vendors. A vendor that ships often gives you more options and more churn at once, and a vendor that ships rarely gives you stability and fewer options. The table only records what happened.
Gaps in this list
The table is not exhaustive. It covers the pages we read for this batch, and it omits vendors we did not check. Treat an absent vendor as unchecked, not as quiet.
Sources
Related posts
More in Models
- AI video launches, week of Oct 4, 2026: what Sume lists
One table of this week's video news: Kling 4.0 Flash, Tavus Griffin-Lite, Runway Seedance 2.5 Draft, Veo 3.1 shutdown. Which each maps to on Sume, with caveats.
- Azure Foundry sora-2 2025-12-08 retires Oct 15: an 11-day plan
The last Azure Foundry Sora deployment, sora-2 version 2025-12-08, retires 2026-10-15 with no replacement listed. Eleven days from today: what to do each day.
- Azure sora-2: July 15, then October 15, and no successor listed
Azure listed sora-2 2025-10-06 to retire 2026-07-15 and sora-2 2025-12-08 to retire 2026-10-15. Only the first has a replacement. How to read a version chain.
- ChatGPT picks Flare or Sunburst for you; the API does not
In ChatGPT, Flare handles standard use and Sunburst takes complex prompts. In the API you choose. How to build that rule on Sume, where sume/auto uses Flare.
Written by Sume