It could take that long. I was wondering if Ubuntu is 24.10 /25.04, 25.10, and 26.04 if pop will align their alpha2, beta, and official release with the Ubuntu release schedule.

I know they said something about a yearly release cadence for cosmic but I'm sure that's once it's officially in production.

That said, as far as an alpha goes, it's much more polished than a typical alpha. The path from here to beta might be faster than we think.

Pop devs never shied away from releasing with non LTS releases though and since one of their main pain points with releases was always gnome + cosmic plugins I'm not sure how their dependency on Ubuntu releases is affected.

I was super nervous for cosmic because I love pop. I didn't want them to bungle it and force me to distro hop. The alpha made me way less nervous and much more excited.

Whatever they do, whenever they release, I just hope they get it right! Small bugs are fine but major crashes would make me very sad.