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Naming and versioning - Amazon Linux 2027
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Naming and versioning

AL2027 Preview

AL2027 is currently available for preview. It is intended for evaluation and testing only and is not recommended for production workloads.

AL2027 provides a minor release every three months during standard support. Each release is identified by an increment from 0 to N. The value 0 refers to the original major release for that iteration. All releases will be called Amazon Linux 2027. When the next version of Amazon Linux is released, AL2027 will enter the maintenance phase and receive security updates and critical bug fixes.

For example, minor releases of AL2027 have the following format:

  • 2027.0.20260903

  • 2027.1.20261203

  • 2027.2.20270303

The corresponding AL2027 AMIs have the following format:

  • al2027-preview-ami-2027.0.20260903.0-kernel-7.1-x86_64

  • al2027-preview-ami-2027.1.20261203.0-kernel-7.1-x86_64

  • al2027-preview-ami-minimal-2027.0.20260903.0-kernel-7.1-arm64

Within a specific minor version, regular AMI releases occur with a timestamp of the date of the AMI release.

  • al2027-preview-ami-2027.0.20260903.0-kernel-7.1-x86_64

  • al2027-preview-ami-2027.0.20261012.0-kernel-7.1-x86_64

  • al2027-preview-ami-2027.0.20261120.0-kernel-7.1-x86_64

To identify an Amazon Linux instance, read the Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) string from /etc/system-release-cpe. Then split the string into its fields and read the platform and version values. On AL2027, the CPE string has the following form:

cpe:2.3:o:amazon:amazon_linux:2027:2027.0.20260903

AL2027 also provides two files for platform identification:

  • /etc/amazon-linux-release points to the same file as /etc/system-release

  • /etc/amazon-linux-release-cpe points to the same file as /etc/system-release-cpe

These two files indicate that an instance is Amazon Linux. There is no need to read a file or split the string into fields, unless you want to know the specific platform and version values. For all identification methods and examples, see Identifying Amazon Linux instances and versions.