What this is
Alibaba's Qwen line is the most prolific open-weight family in 2026. Apache 2.0 across most releases, MoE architecture since late 2024, and an aggressive cadence that has put Qwen at or near the top of every open-weight benchmark in 2026. This page is a 2026-05-15 release-by-release reference.
Qwen Release Timeline
| Date | Release | Notable |
|---|---|---|
| Late 2024 | Qwen 2.0 | MoE; first to outperform Llama 3 on MMLU/HumanEval |
| Nov 2024 | QwQ-32B-Preview | o1-style reasoning model, Apache 2.0 |
| Dec 25, 2024 | QvQ-72B-Preview | Visual reasoning research model |
| Jan 29, 2025 | Qwen 2.5-Max | Flagship-tier release |
| Jan 2025 | Qwen 2.5-VL (3/7/32/72B) | Multimodal lineup |
| Apr 28, 2025 | Qwen 3 family | Dense 0.6B-32B + MoE 30B-A3B, 235B-A22B, Apache 2.0 |
| Sep 23, 2025 | Qwen3-VL-235B (Instruct + Thinking) | Top open multimodal benchmark |
| Late 2025 | Qwen3-Coder-Plus | Coding agent series on Qwen3 |
| Feb 16, 2026 | Qwen 3.5 + Qwen 3.5-Plus | Open-weight + proprietary tiers |
| Apr 2026 | Qwen 3.5-Omni + Qwen 3.6-Plus | Proprietary; multimodal omni model |
| Apr 2026 | Qwen 3.6-Max Preview | Stronger world knowledge + agentic coding |
Family at a Glance (Mid-2026)
| Family | Architecture | License | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3 (dense) | 0.6B-32B dense | Apache 2.0 | On-device + edge inference |
| Qwen 3 MoE | 30B-A3B, 235B-A22B | Apache 2.0 | Server inference at frontier-near quality |
| Qwen3-Coder | Coding-tuned Qwen3 | Apache 2.0 | Coding agents, SWE-Bench class |
| Qwen3-VL | Vision + text | Apache 2.0 | Multimodal benchmarks (SOTA open) |
| Qwen 3.5 (open) + 3.5-Plus (proprietary) | MoE | Mixed | Q1 2026 flagship |
| Qwen 3.6-Plus + 3.6-Max Preview | Proprietary MoE | Closed | Agentic coding + world knowledge |
Six Things the Lineage Tells You
- Qwen ships faster than any non-Chinese open-weight family. 11+ flagship releases in 18 months.
- Apache 2.0 across the open tier. No MAU clauses, no field-of-use restrictions — the friendliest open licence among major Chinese labs.
- Dense + MoE coverage. 0.6B dense for edge through 235B-A22B MoE for server is the broadest size range from any single lab.
- Modality split: open for base + coder + vision; proprietary for top-tier flagship. Qwen 3.5-Plus and 3.6-Plus stay closed; the open tier still leads the open-weight leaderboard.
- Qwen3-VL 235B leads the open multimodal benchmarks. Roughly comparable to closed frontier multimodal on most evals.
- Agentic coding is the 2026 product focus. Qwen3-Coder + 3.6-Max Preview both lean into agentic / multi-step coding workloads.
What This Means for AI Visibility
Qwen is the open-weight family most likely to be deployed by enterprises, developers, and local-AI projects. Brand visibility on Qwen-served surfaces (Cursor with Qwen routing, on-prem deployments, OpenClaw with Qwen backend) matters in 2026, and the underlying model uses different default sources than ChatGPT or Claude. Test brand presence on Qwen separately from US-frontier surfaces.
Methodology
Release dates and capabilities combine the Wikipedia Qwen article, the official Qwen blog, QwenLM GitHub, Qwen on HuggingFace, and Alibaba Cloud Model Studio documentation.
How Presenc AI Helps
Presenc AI tracks brand visibility across Qwen-served surfaces (cloud Qwen, on-prem Qwen3, OpenClaw with Qwen backend, Qwen-routed agents) so brand teams see how the open-weight default mix changes their AI mention footprint over time.