v1.1.0

ℹ️ About 1.1.0 release

This inference release brings important changes to the ecosystem:

• We have deprecated Python 3.9 which reached EOL
• We have not made inference-models the default backend for running predictions - this change is postponed until version 1.2.0.

🚀 Added

🧠 Qwen3.5

Thanks to @Matvezy, inference now supports the new Qwen3.5 model.

Qwen3.5 is Alibaba's latest open-source model family (released Feb 2026), ranging from 0.8B to 397B parameters. The headline features are native multimodal (text + vision) support. inference and Workflows support small 0.8B parameters version.

Model is available only with inference-models backend - released in inference-models 0.20.0

🪄 GPT-5.4 support

Thanks to @Erol444, the LLM Workflows block now supports GPT-5.4, keeping inference current with the latest OpenAI model lineup.

⚙️ Selectable inference backend for batch processing

Following up on inferemce 1.0.0 release, Roboflow clients can now select which inference backend is used for batch processing — giving more fine-grained control when mixing legacy and new engine workloads.

Using inference-cli, one can specify which models backend will be selected inference-models or old-inference.

inference rf-cloud batch-processing process-images-with-workflow \
    --workflow-id <your-workflow> \
    --batch-id <your-batch> \
    --api-key<your-api-key> \
    --inference-backend inference-models
# or - for videos
inference rf-cloud batch-processing process-videos-with-workflow \
    --workflow-id <your-workflow> \
    --batch-id <your-batch> \
    --api-key<your-api-key> \
    --inference-backend inference-models

The same can be configured in Roboflow App and via HTTP integration - check out swagger

Caution

Currently, the default backend is old-inference, but that will change in the nearest future - Roboflow clients should verify new backend and make necessary adjustments in their integrations if they want to still use old-inference backend.

🦺 Maintanence

🐍 Drop of Python 3.9 and upgrade to transformers>=5

We've ported all public builds to work with versions of Python newer than 3.9, which was slowing us down when it comes to onboarding new features. Thanks to deprecation, we could migrate to transformers>=5 and enable new model - Qwen 3.5.

Other changes

• Fix theme build by @Erol444 in #2093
• fix docs.yml to correctly build css by @Erol444 in #2095
• fix: pinned models no longer block LRU eviction by @hansent in #2091
• Add support for pushing back to client HTTP 402 errors by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2099
• Add env flag to globally disable selected inference-models backends by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2096
• Added RF-DETR by @Erol444 in #2098
• Qwen3 5 improvements by @Matvezy in #2101
• Fix OpenCV ffmpeg/gstreamer support in JP51 core image by @alexnorell in #2100
• Release/1.1.0 by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2102

Full Changelog: v1.0.5...v1.1.0