Will the next Claude Opus model be released by September 27, 2026?

THE BRIEF, WRITTEN AFTER THE OUTCOME

Crowd expected a Claude Opus release, panel leaned NO: mean 35%, crowd 71%

The outcome was YES, the next Claude Opus model was released by 27 September 2026. The crowd (Polymarket price frozen when the question was asked) priced YES at 71%. The panel mean was 35% and the median 23%, both well below the crowd; seven of 20 models called YES. The strongest calls were Perplexity Sonar Pro, DeepSeek V3 + web search and Claude Sonnet 4.5 + web search, each assigning high probabilities; the weakest calls gave near-zero probabilities and recorded no theses or drivers.

• Outcome: YES, resolved 2026-09-22, before the forecasting window closed.
• Crowd (Polymarket price frozen) chance of YES was 71%, it called YES.
• Panel: 20 models, mean chance of YES 35%, median chance of YES 23%, seven models called YES.
• Highest panel chance of YES 76% (Perplexity Sonar Pro), lowest 3% (Gemini 2.5 Pro).
• Many panel records contained no recorded theses, drivers or sources.