# Qwen3-Next

Qwen3-Next is an AI model released by Qwen on Sep 11 2025. It has 80B parameters, a 256k context window and open weight.

## Facts

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Model | Qwen3-Next |
| Developer | Qwen |
| Release date | Thursday, Sep 11 2025 |
| Licensing | Open Weight |
| Parameters | 80B |
| Context window | 256k |

## About Qwen3-Next

Qwen3-Next introduced a more efficient model architecture in September 2025, beginning with an 80-billion-parameter model that activated about 3 billion parameters per token. It combined Gated DeltaNet with gated attention and a highly sparse mixture-of-experts design. The objective was to increase capacity and handle long inputs without proportionately increasing the computation required for every generated token.

Alibaba published separate Instruct and Thinking checkpoints, with the Instruct version operating without explicit thinking blocks. The documented native context was 262,144 tokens, with extensions requiring the prescribed configuration. This made Qwen3-Next an architectural development within the Qwen line, rather than simply a larger dense model. Its overall weight size and active parameter count described different aspects of deployment cost.

## Questions and answers

### When was Qwen3-Next released?

Qwen3-Next was released by Qwen on Thursday, Sep 11 2025.

### Who made Qwen3-Next?

Qwen3-Next was built by Qwen. Alibaba's AI lab, building the Qwen family. The most prolific publisher of open-weight models of any major lab, alongside a closed Max and Plus tier sold through Alibaba Cloud.

### What is the context window of Qwen3-Next?

Qwen3-Next has a context window of 256k. Providers may specify separate input and output token limits.

### How many parameters does Qwen3-Next have?

Qwen3-Next is reported at 80B parameters.

### Is Qwen3-Next open source?

Partly. Qwen3-Next is an open-weight model: the trained weights are free to download and run locally or on your own infrastructure, but the training data and code are not fully released and the license may restrict some commercial uses. It is not open source in the strict sense.

### What came before and after Qwen3-Next?

Qwen's previous tracked release was Qwen3-Coder on Jul 22 2025, 51 days earlier. It was followed by Qwen3-Max on Sep 24 2025.


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Canonical page: https://aireleasetracker.com/model/qwen/qwen3-next
Site index: https://aireleasetracker.com/llms.txt
Source: AI Release Tracker (https://aireleasetracker.com). Most benchmark scores come from lab launch material; gathered results identify the leaderboard that published them.