Milestones
The JDK 7 development schedule is divided into a sequence of milestone cycles, each five to nine builds in length, with builds occuring roughly once each week. There will be no formal beta or early-access releases, as in the past. Major features and other potentially-destabilizing changes will targeted for integration early in a specific milestone. For more information, please see the current draft of the JDK 7 Development Process.
Here is the current high-level milestone schedule, with the features targeted to each cycle:
The final milestone cycle, M7, will be followed by a release-candidate test period of indeterminate length, but most likely four to eight weeks, after which the final release will be declared.
Some features have been approved for the release but are not yet targeted to a specific milestone. When they are targeted then they'll be added to the above table.