Today, the Joomla project announced the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 RC1 (download).
According to the press release at joomla.org, the team hopes this will be the only release candidate before a stable version. That remains to be seen.
There remains a lot of work before Joomla 1.6 is stable enough for a production site. Read on for more.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is still an evaluation version and is not intended for running a production site.