Magento 2 release date was announced in Imagine 2015. Magento Merchant GA should be released in Q4 of 2015.
Here is the complete list of magento 2 roadmap milestones.
Current available release is Magento 2 Merchant Beta. As it is stated on magento blog – this release is pretty close to Magento 2 GA. GA version should be released later this year.
Notable improvements are:
– significant performance improvement
– Full page caching for Community Edition
– base responsive design
– switching from Prototype to jQuery
– Reduced JS code calls on frontend
– checkout improvements
– standalone database for order management and checkout
– customizable admin grid
– Zend framework upgrade (1.12.3)
– native support for Solr (EE only)
What’s next after Magento 2.0 is released?
– Extended API coverage
– Staging and preview functionality for Magento sites (something that isn’t always possible on a live Magento site).
– New search functionality (because this can always be improved)
– Improved CMS (perhaps to make it easier to work with a.k.a. WordPress CMS)
– Multi-warehouse support (Magento does not natively allow you to keep track of items in multiple warehouses)
More info about Magento 2 can be found on:
Codebase: https://github.com/magento/magento2
Documentation: http://devdocs.magento.com/
Magento Forums: http://community.magento.com/t5/Core-Technology-Magento-2/ct-p/Magento-2
Magento 2 Developer Hub: http://www.magento.com/developers/magento2
You can also check our guide on setting up magento 2 development environment