At the Intel Vision 2025 conference, the company showed a slide indicating that the Panther Lake series processors are a 2026 product. Many assumed that their launch was delayed, since Intel had previously assured that it would release new products this year. However, in a conversation with the Overclock3D portal, Intel executives clarified that Panther Lake chips, created using Intel’s proprietary 18A process technology, will be available as early as 2025.
Image source: OverClock3D
The launch of Panther Lake will be similar in many ways to the launch of Lunar Lake processors. The first devices based on them were announced only at CES 2025 in January, while the processors themselves were unveiled three months earlier. Thus, we can expect Panther Lake to hit the market later this year, but in a limited number of products, and will not become widely available until early 2026.
Below is an earlier comment from Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s client computing group, in which she notes that Panther Lake will “reach significant volumes” in 2026.
«“We will strengthen our customer roadmap with the launch of Panther Lake, our flagship product on Intel’s 18A process node, in the second half of 2025. As the first major customer for Intel 18A, I have seen the progress Intel Foundry is making in terms of performance and yield. I look forward to seeing processors begin production in the second half of the year, demonstrating the benefits of our world-class design and process capabilities. For customers, 2026 will be an even more exciting year as Panther Lake reaches significant volumes and we introduce our next-generation client processor family, codenamed Nova Lake. Both chip families will deliver high performance across all PC segments with significantly better cost and margins for us, strengthening our competitiveness and value proposition for partners and customers.”
Intel is betting big on Panther Lake. The company says these processors should deliver “Lunar Lake-level power efficiency and Arrow Lake-level performance.” If Intel does achieve this goal, Panther Lake could be an attractive option for performance-minded users, especially those who value laptops with long battery life.