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Sora 3 and Kling 3.5 are still rumors. Veo 4 already has an answer, and it is not Veo 4.
Google skipped past Veo 4 at I/O 2026 and shipped Gemini Omni instead. Sora 3 and Kling 3.5 remain unannounced.
Search for any of these three model names next to “release date” and you will find dozens of confident articles with specific specs and feature lists. As of this writing, neither Sora 3 nor Kling 3.5 has been officially announced by OpenAI or Kuaishou. Veo 4 specifically never arrived either, but not because it is still pending: Google skipped past it entirely. Here is what actually happened with each one, and how much weight the remaining rumors deserve.
Veo 4 did not happen. Gemini Omni did.
Google I/O 2026 came and went in May without a Veo 4. What shipped instead was Gemini Omni, a multimodal model line Google describes as generating video, image and audio output from any input, built by combining Gemini's reasoning with the same media stack behind Veo, Nano Banana and Genie. The first model in the family, Gemini Omni Flash, went live immediately in the Gemini app, Google Flow and YouTube Shorts.
That is not Veo 4 under a new name. Google's own developer documentation still lists Veo 3.1 as the current dedicated video generation model, with Gemini Omni positioned as a separate, broader product line. We track it separately too: see Gemini Omni for what it actually is and what we still do not know about it.
Kling 3.5: a plausible Q3, unannounced
Reporting places a possible Kling 3.5 in Q3 2026, with claimed features including five-minute generation and native audio. Given Kuaishou's release pace (Kling 3.0 itself launched in February 2026), a Q3 follow-up is plausible on cadence alone, which is different from confirmed. We have found no official Kuaishou announcement naming Kling 3.5 or any of its claimed features.
Sora 3: paused, not replaced
OpenAI reportedly paused Sora 2 availability in March 2026, citing cost. That is consistent with reported compute economics running roughly $1 million a day against subscription revenue estimated under $2 million a month, numbers we cited in our own migration guide. A Sora 3 is rumored as the eventual response, but OpenAI has not announced one, and the confirmed, dated fact remains the one we have been tracking directly: the Sora API shuts down on 24 September 2026 with nothing named as its replacement.
Why we are writing about rumors we cannot confirm
Because readers are going to encounter these claims regardless, usually from AI-tool comparison blogs that restate the same speculation as if it were reported fact, often without a single named source. Our position is the same one we take with pricing and capability claims elsewhere on this site: label a rumor as a rumor, say plainly what is and is not sourced, and update this page the moment a company makes something official. Veo 4 is the example of exactly that: it was rumor until May, then it was resolved, so this page no longer calls it one.
Sources: TechCrunch, Google.
Daniel Ochoa: Covers model launches, shutdowns and pricing changes as they happen. Reads deprecation notices for a living so you do not have to.