We're beginning a limited preview of the GPT‑5.6 series: Sol, our flagship model; Terra, a balanced model for everyday work; and Luna, a fast and affordable model. Terra has competitive performance to GPT‑5.5 while being 2x cheaper and Luna brings strong capability at our lowest cost.

GPT‑5.6 Sol launches with our most robust safety stack to date. We strengthened protections for higher-risk activity, sensitive cyber requests, and repeated misuse, and spent multiple weeks finding weaknesses, pressure-testing our system, and hardening it against real-world attacks.

We believe in broad access, and we plan to make GPT‑5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna generally available in the coming weeks. As part of our ongoing engagement with the U.S. government, we previewed our plans and the models’ capabilities ahead of today’s launch. At their request, we are starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners whose participation has been shared with the government, before releasing more broadly. During this preview, we will continue testing and coordinating closely with partners as we work toward broader availability. We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default. It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them. We are taking this short-term step because we believe it is the strongest path to broader availability in the coming weeks, while we work with the Administration to develop the cyber Executive Order framework and a repeatable process for future model releases.

GPT‑5.6 Sol is our strongest model yet. To give a preview of model performance, we share a set of evaluations highlighting improved agentic capabilities in coding, biology, and cybersecurity, with additional safety and preparedness evaluations available in our system card⁠(opens in a new window). We will share an expanded suite of evaluation results when we make the model broadly available.

With GPT‑5.6, we’re introducing a new `max` reasoning effort to give Sol the most time to reason deeply. Additionally, we’re introducing a new `ultra` mode that goes beyond the capabilities of a single agent by leveraging subagents to accelerate complex work.

For coding workflows, GPT‑5.6 Sol sets a new state of the art on Terminal‑Bench 2.1, which tests command-line workflows requiring planning, iteration, and tool coordination.