On the evening of July 16, 2026, Kimi’s next flagship — K3 — began showing up as a live product option, according to reporting that cites Kimi’s own in-product copy. IT Home describes it as Moonshot’s strongest Kimi model to date, positioned for coding, games / 3D, and knowledge workloads, with a headline context window of up to 1M tokens.
What has not arrived yet is equally important: as of that report, Moonshot’s Weibo, website, and WeChat channels still lacked a formal press release, and parameter counts, API pricing, and public benchmarks remain unpublished.
Key takeaways
- Soft launch, not a full datasheet. K3 is selectable in product; the paperwork (model card, price list, open-weight decision) is still missing.
- Sits beside Kimi K2.7 Code. Kimi Code currently lists K3 and K2.7 Code — three model IDs total — so teams can keep the June coding build while trying the new flagship.
- 1M context is membership-gated. Per the same product copy: Andante does not support K3 yet; Moderato gets 256K; Allegretto and above can reach 1M.
- Community names in circulation: K3 Max (“chat & agent”) and K3 Swarm Max (batch / massive search). Treat variant naming as product UI until Moonshot publishes a canonical API ID list.
Ignore rumor numbers for now.(Confirmed July 27: 2.8T-parameter MoE with 104B active. See the Kimi K3 model page.)
What appears to be live
| Signal | Status (as of July 16 evening reports) |
|---|---|
| In-product K3 option (web / client / Code tooling) | Reported live |
| Up to 1M context on higher membership tiers | Reported in official product copy |
| Formal Moonshot press release / blog | Not yet |
| Official model card / benchmark table | Not yet |
| Confirmed API pricing | Not yet |
| Open weights on Hugging Face | Not yet (prior K2-series precedent ≠ a K3 promise) |
Earlier on July 15–16, Moonshot posted teaser videos and the community circulated head-to-head clips against Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol. Those are marketing/demo signals — useful for intent, not for scoreboards.
Why it matters
- China’s open-and-hosted coding race just got another flagship signal. Even without a card, shipping K3 next to K2.7 Code tells developers Moonshot is moving the default target beyond the K2.x line.
- Long context remains a Kimi brand bet. Tiering 256K vs 1M by membership mirrors how other vendors monetize extreme windows — check your plan before assuming every seat gets 1M.
- EEAT discipline: until Moonshot posts numbers you can cite, do not plan capacity, price, or “beats Opus” claims on leaked parameter counts.
Update: K3 is now fully launched
July 27, 2026: Moonshot AI released the full Kimi K3 model weights (2.8T parameters, 104B active MoE), a 47-page technical report, and infrastructure code on GitHub and Hugging Face. API pricing is $3/$15 per 1M tokens. The model ships under a custom Kimi K3 License (not MIT/Apache). See the full Kimi K3 model page for complete specs, benchmarks and the license details.
For landscape context, see the 2026 LLM guide.