I hope you have read the chat log from the "Ask the Joomla team" session (or my highlights post about the same).
If you did, you might have seen that Joomla 1.6 beta is close to being released.
According to Mark Dexter of the Joomla team, the announcement of a beta version of Joomla 1.6 is about a week or two away.
<Mark_Dexter> We're making good progress towards a beta release, and there will be an announcement on this soon.
<lonemamber> what does that mean in real terms
<SullySullivan> What does "soon" mean? This calendar year?
<Mark_Dexter> the announcement should be within a week or two
Remember, this was written April 14th, so stay tuned for a release in the near future.
You'd better set aside some time to test it as well - there are a lot of changes in Joomla 1.6 compared to 1.5.