Nano Banana Already Shipped. The Date to Watch Is 2 October 2026

Nano Banana is out. Google shipped it in 2025, three more models have landed under the same name since, and you can call all four today.

So the question has no release date to give you. What it does have is a retirement date, and that is the part worth knowing: on 2 October 2026 Google switches off gemini-2.5-flash-image — the original Nano Banana, the one the name was coined for. Anyone still searching for when it launches is very likely running on the model that is about to stop answering.

What actually shipped

Four models carry the Nano Banana name. We run all four, so here is the lineup with the real Google model IDs attached:

We ordered that by the generation encoded in the ID — 2.5, then 3, then 3.1 — because it is the only ordering anyone can verify. Google has published no dated release list for this family, and we are not going to manufacture one. The IDs give you sequence. They do not give you a calendar.

Which is where the confusion starts, because the names do not carry the chronology and the IDs do. Read the middle column instead of the first one and two things fall straight out. The product called Lite postdates the product called Nano Banana by a full generation, despite sounding like a reduced edition of it. And the product called Pro is not a premium version of the product called 2 — built against different generations, on different weights, billed differently, however much the naming suggests otherwise.

Which of them deserves your money is a different question with a different answer, and it has its own four-way comparison. If that answer turns out to be Pro, there is a Pro API guide as well. This page is about the calendar.

The one date that is genuinely on the calendar

2 October 2026. That is when the original Nano Banana stops existing as an endpoint.

The date is published, not inferred — Google lists it against gemini-2.5-flash-image alongside every other model it is winding down. The model card states the intent plainly:

"The legacy pioneer of the Nano Banana series. While it has been a reliable workhorse, we strongly recommend that customers transition to Nano Banana 2 Lite to experience enhanced quality, faster generation speeds, and lower API pricing."

Take that for what it is: a company steering customers off something it still sells, printed next to the day it stops selling it.

There is an asymmetry here worth naming, because it explains why this particular search never resolves. Wind-down dates get published months ahead — customers have running integrations, and Google needs them moved before the lights go out. Launches do not work that way. A launch is an announcement, and announcements are not scheduled in public. So the query keeps coming back empty however often it is run, while the answer nobody searched for has been sitting in a published table with a number attached the entire time.

Retirement is also absolute, which is the part people underestimate. Once Google stops serving that model, the slug starts returning errors at every reseller in the same moment — ours included — and no failover configuration routes around it. This is not an outage. Outages end.

The original's real capabilities, and the places it falls short, we covered separately in our explainer on the original Nano Banana.

Why the question keeps getting asked

"Nano Banana" started as a nickname. It circulated before Google formally attached it to anything, which is unusual — most model names are announced, this one was adopted. Names that arrive that way tend to keep circulating in their original form long after the product has moved on.

Then the family grew to four, and three of them are suffixed variants of a name that was already informal. Search behaviour lags product reality by a year or more in a normal market, and this one is not normal: the flagship name now refers to a model its own vendor calls legacy, while the models people should actually be using are called things like gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image. Of course the question comes out as "when is it releasing."

What we can and cannot say about what comes next

We will not predict a Nano Banana 3, and we would not trust a page that did.

What can be said honestly is that we have no announcement, no dated roadmap, and no private information about Google's release plans. Anything beyond the four models above is inference from a shipping pattern, not fact, and here is the pattern with that caveat firmly attached: Google has shipped this family as generations rather than one-off models, with a pro tier and flash tiers on the same underlying generation, and it has attached retirement dates to older members only after a named replacement was already available to migrate to.

If that holds, the useful expectation is not a date. It is a shape. A new generation arrives as a new slug you can switch to, the model you are on gets a retirement notice with months of runway, and the migration is a string change rather than a rewrite. Plan for that shape and the actual announcement date stops mattering.

If it does not hold, we will have been wrong about a guess we labelled as a guess.

What the date means if you never moved

Briefly, because a different page owns the long version. You change one string, google/nano-banana/text-to-image to google/nano-banana-2-lite/text-to-image, and the per-request cost drops from $0.0312 to $0.0238, both figures checked 26 August 2026. A couple of parameter defaults move underneath you as you do it. Our explainer on the original model walks that through properly, and we would rather point you at it than half-repeat it here.

The two numbers are worth reading as timeline evidence rather than as a price list, though. The replacement shipped a generation later and landed under the thing it supersedes. Vendor pricing does not usually travel in that direction. When it does, the vendor generally wants the old weights off its hardware — which is the same message the model card is sending, expressed in dollars instead of prose.

Prices and product terms can change. Check each provider's current pricing before making a purchasing decision. Google Batch or Flex pricing is not directly equivalent to a standard on-demand API request because scheduling, availability, and processing conditions differ; it is therefore excluded from this comparison. This is a scoped comparison, not a claim that E2X is the world's cheapest option in every configuration.

If you would sooner diff schemas than read prose, the Lite model's llms.txt is machine-readable, and each model in the family publishes one. Pick by job from text-to-image, image-to-image for edits, or explore video generation via image-to-video. See our Google models lineup, or go straight to specific slugs like Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro in our catalog. You can also compare performance across generations in our Gemini Omni benchmark report. Then do it in August. Not on 1 October.

Frequently asked questions

When is Google releasing Nano Banana?

It is already released. Google shipped the original Nano Banana, gemini-2.5-flash-image, in 2025, and three further models have launched under the name since: Nano Banana Pro, Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana 2 Lite. There is no pending release date to wait for. The date that matters is 2 October 2026, when Google retires the original.

Is Nano Banana out yet?

Yes, and has been since 2025. All four models in the family are callable through our API today, from $0.0238 per image on Nano Banana 2 Lite up to $0.075 on Nano Banana Pro as of 26 August 2026. If a page describes Nano Banana as upcoming or unreleased, it is at least a year out of date.

How many Nano Banana models are there?

Four, as of 26 August 2026: Nano Banana (gemini-2.5-flash-image), Nano Banana Pro (gemini-3-pro-image), Nano Banana 2 (gemini-3.1-flash-image) and Nano Banana 2 Lite (gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image). Each runs on its own weights and bills at its own rate. Four names here means four products, not four settings on one.

What is the last day the original Nano Banana will answer a request?

Google's published wind-down schedule gives gemini-2.5-flash-image an end date of 2 October 2026, so plan on that being the last day it answers anything. Nothing else in the family carries an announced end date. Google serves the model, so every reseller loses it in the same moment — changing provider is not a way to keep using it past that day.

Which Nano Banana model is the newest?

By model ID, the Gemini 3.1 pair: Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana 2 Lite both sit at 3.1, ahead of Nano Banana Pro at 3 and the original at 2.5. Newest is not the same as best for a given job — Pro holds capabilities the 3.1 flash models do not, which is why it bills $0.075 against $0.04 and $0.0238 on our API as of 26 August 2026. Since Google has published no dated releases for the family, the ID is the only ordering anyone can actually verify.

Is there a Nano Banana 3?

Not as of 26 August 2026. Google has announced no such model and we have no roadmap information, so any page giving you a date for one is guessing. The newest models in the family are the Gemini 3.1 flash pair, Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana 2 Lite.

Do I need to change my code to move off the original Nano Banana?

Usually just the model string: google/nano-banana/text-to-image becomes google/nano-banana-2-lite/text-to-image, and your cost per request falls from $0.0312 to $0.0238. Two parameter defaults do change during that swap, so check them before you deploy rather than after. Anything that needs resolution beyond 1K wants a different target, and our migration write-up covers which one.