Windows 10 Support Branch Roadmap

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update will probably be available in the third quarter of 2016. It will affect the Windows 10 roadmap in three stages, shown from bottom to top in this diagram.

The Anniversary Update will roll out first to computers that receive the Current Branch, which is the supported Windows 10 support branch for Windows 10 Home and for computers on other enrolled Windows 10 editions. It follows the Threshold (TH) and second Threshold (TH2) builds. Release to Current Branch could affect organizations even if they have not deployed Windows 10 widely, because the Anniversary Update will appear on personal devices used by employees at work.

The Anniversary Update will later roll out to computers on the Current Branch for Business, which is available to organizations with Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise, starting in the fourth quarter of 2016. Organizations will be able to defer this upgrade from between two months to eight months, pushing it into the first quarter of 2017 before they will have no choice but to take the new feature upgrade. Computers on the Current Branch for Business will eventually have to move to the Anniversary Update or to a later update (labeled X1 here), because Microsoft only offers security and bug fixes for the two most recent instances of the Current Branch for Business.