Milestones

This document is intended to help Chairs and Team Contacts in planning their deadlines for specification milestones. The tool mainly considers the administrative constraints (publication delays, transition requests, CR and PR review period, CfE, etc.) on the way to REC. These administrative constraints are only a small subset of the overall requirements of REC track.

In theory, it takes around 174 days to move a specification to W3C Recommendation, without open exclusion opportunities. In reality, various requirements from the W3C process may introduce delays (developing the test-suite, waiting for adequate implementation experience to exit CR, implementation report, PR review and objections).

These constraints may introduce much longer milestones than reported by this tool, which provides nevertheless a good starting point for discussion.

Group Call for Consensus (CfC) to move to First Public Working Draft
Monday, May 20 2019
Transition request to First Public Working Draft
Thursday, May 30 2019

Publication of the First Public Working Draft, start of the 150 days exclusion opportunity, request for wide review
Thursday, June 6 2019

2019-06-10 didn't work out. Picked instead 2019-06-06
 2019-06-10 is not a Tuesday or a Thursday
 2019-06-09 is in the week end
 2019-06-08 is in the week end
 2019-06-07 is not a Tuesday or a Thursday

Last day to set the Reference Draft used for the 150 days exclusion opportunity started earlier.
Wednesday, September 4 2019
Latest date to request wide review before Candidate Recommendation
(starts a 90 days review period + 0 weeks to address them)
Monday, June 10 2019
Deadline for wide review
Sunday, September 8 2019
Group Call for Consensus (CfC) to move to Candidate Recommendation, wide review is done
Monday, September 9 2019
Transition request to Candidate Recommendation
Thursday, September 19 2019
This transition request needs special steps to accommodate publication.

Publication of the Candidate Recommendation, start of a 60 days exclusion opportunity
Thursday, September 26 2019

2019-09-30 didn't work out. Picked instead 2019-09-26
 2019-09-30 is not a Tuesday or a Thursday
 2019-09-29 is in the week end
 2019-09-28 is in the week end
 2019-09-27 is not a Tuesday or a Thursday

Deadline for comments
Thursday, October 24 2019
Group Call for Consensus (CfC) to move to Proposed Recommendation
Monday, October 28 2019
Transition request to Proposed Recommendation, showing adequate implementation experience
Thursday, November 7 2019
Publication of the Proposed Recommendation, start of the Advisory Committee Review
Thursday, November 14 2019
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Last day of the 150 days exclusion opportunity started from First Public Working Draft
Sunday, November 3 2019
Last day of the 60 days exclusion opportunity started from Candidate Recommendation
Monday, November 25 2019
Last day of the Advisory Committee Review
Thursday, December 12 2019
Transition request to Recommendation
Friday, December 13 2019
Publication of the Recommendation
Thursday, December 19 2019
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Upcoming Moratoria on Publications

The upcoming moratoria on publications are announced on the Chairs mailing list.

From August 22nd, 2025 to September 1st, 2025 : Limited W3C Staff Availability
From November 7th, 2025 to November 17th, 2025 : TPAC 2025
From December 24th, 2025 to January 5th, 2026 : End of Year

Settings

The computation takes into account the W3C Process, the W3C Patent Policy, and the transition requirements. You may tweak the current logic/dependencies depending on your preferences or current publication state:

Hide the First Public Working Draft constraints.

Don't use the W3C webmaster for CR publications, and use the automated publication system instead.

weeks to address wide review comments after the wide review deadline before issuing a Group Call for Consensus.

You may use a TR shortname to take into account the history:

plh@w3.org
This document is maintained on GitHub. Issues are welcome.