There has been no announcement of the date in advance of the release. Adobe has never done that, and there’s no reason to presume that they will this time.

But be sure that Adobe is well aware of the pending end of life/support date for CF2016 coming in 2021.

And there’s no reason to think that CF2020 (or 2021) will come out after then, given that the public beta has been open since August.

That’s a fair question, though of course that’s a big “if” (whether the next release popularly called CF2020 somehow becomes CF2021). And unless Adobe tells us they will somehow “extend” core support for CF2016 beyond its current end date, the “option” would be to to upgrade to CF2018, whose core support ends in 2023.

Note that since CF2018’s release, there has been a discounted price for those on CF2016 to upgrade it. (Those on 11 or earlier must buy a full license.) I do realize that some running on 2016 will not want to to do that (pay for an upgrade to 2018, then pay for an upgrade to 2020).

But a case could be made that it’s not a crazy idea for this upcoming release. CF2020 is going to be a pretty major release, both architecturally with its new modularity and in terms of features (judging by what Adobe has announced, and what folks can learn more for themselves if they join the prerelease).

Even if CF2020 were to come out this year and well before that planned Feb 2021 end date for core support for CF2016, some may not want to move to it “right away”, as things shake out post-release.

There may be a second option, based on what Adobe has done previously, where once the new version came out (and they no longer sell the earlier version), they offered the option to “backwards license” the previous release (in this case, that would be CF2018, once CF2020 came out).  That way, one could buy 2020 but run 2018, at least until they were comfortable moving up, and then they could make that switch (with that license, they’d bought).

About that second option, if you check out the comments in that post I link to, it turns out that those who would buy the “new” version intending to “backwards license” it to the old one would need to NOT buy that from the Adobe retail site, but either via a volume licensing agreement or from a reseller.

To that last point, I’ll note that the makers of FusionReactor are CF resellers and they have a site where you can see current prices for all CF editions, including upgrades from 2016, and they always have discounts–and right now are offering a 25% discount for full licenses of CF2018. See https://buy-adobe-software.com.

But Michael, let’s see if Adobe (or anyone else) has any other ideas or thoughts for you.