Some talk on forums about GIMP 3.0 and its wonderful new features. Not a trace of a real GIMP 3.0 in the Internet. The last news on gimp.org was published on May 28, 2024. No updates since then. Do they drop the project for lack of money and team members? Do they put it into the cold storage? What’s going on?
Not dead, just not ready.
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Gimp 2.0 was released in early 2004. For the last ? ten? years there have been rumors of 3.0. Now, 20 years later, I don’t believe it. Too many years of ‘soon’ and no delivery.
However, it may well be the the year of Linux, 2036?
They promised to release GIMP 3.0 last May. And went silent. And no news even about the release candidate.
I had a look at GIMP GitHub. 8 persons work on version 2.99. Just a small team of 8 enthusiasts
I’m pretty sure if they did abandon it they would say something,as you mention it’s only a small team working on it, they may have come across something critical that they are trying to solve before release.
I am a bit surprised to hear this - I am fairly sure I just read a take on the new version in a Linux Magazine. Yup - just backtracked the entry in Linux Format. Apparently based on what they have worked with on the 2.99 version, they point out the improvements, then suggest that 3.0 release is coming within a couple/few months.
Hope that helps to reassure users of the future that comes… 
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This is normal for GIMP. Nothing to be concerned about. They move slow and almost never hit their initial release target time frames.
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They did not promise anything. They estimated a release date.
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It is not at all abandoned. You can see on github that the gimp code receives 20-40 commits every week.
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Maybe I’m too naive, but it seems to be rather strange that there are no good (and rich) investors in GIMP.
You can try gimp-git if you’d like access to the cutting edge commits. If you can get it to build, I’ve found it to generally be stable enough for light use.
Well when and if GIMP 3.0 Comes out i will buy one GIMP suit and dance in the street!
With a sign that says: GIMP 3.0 is out!
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It would be pity if GIMP 3 is outdated by the time it comes out.
I think the public demand for the good (and powerful) FOSS competitor of Photoshop is growing.
As there are artists and designers who intentionally use GIMP professionally, “outdated” is the wrong word.
Professionals have two main issues with GIMP, and only one is getting fixed in GIMP 3.
- Unusual UI and UX.
- Random crashes.
Other things include specific features related to layer groups, non-destructive editing, etc.
Version 3 will not fully address the UI and UX issue.
Yes, GTK 4 is already out and GIMP 3 will be using GTK 3, but GTK 3 is actually pretty good. So, it’s not really outdated, but it is not as fresh as it could be.
As far as random crashes are concerned, this also happens in Photoshop, but the UI and UX kinda make up for it. The price doesn’t, of course. 
PS: When we get GIMP 4 in ten years, Adobe will get a real run for their money! 
PS#2: Fund the project so that GIMP 4 can be released before GTK 5 comes out. 
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What do you mean by “outdated”? Even GIMP 2.10.38 is not outdated.
Possibly mbod means that it’s based on an older library (gtk3), when many other things have been using gtk4 for a while now?
After all, gtk4 was released in 2016 
This shoud read “Possibly @novice24 means that …”
You’re right…well you mentioned it last lol
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Though I mentioned the toolkit myself, I don’t actually believe they were referring to that, which is why I mentioned the UX aspect.
The user experience of GIMP versus using Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, etc. is similar to experiencing culture shock.
→ It’s still humans being humans but life in the US, UK, Canada, etc. is noticeably different from life in India.
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Frankly, I was using Gimp before 1.0, I don’t use it often, and I find myself being confused by the UI and how to do things, when I come back to it. Photoshop is much more intuitive for most things (sad to say). So I quite understand your UI/UX comment.
I understand the difficulty, I sure couldn’t do it 