July 2026 turned out to be eventful: GPT-5.6, Grok 4.5, and Muse Spark 1.1 launched within a single week, and Claude Fable 5 returned after a nearly three-week pause. Below are the current models and agents covered in this article:
- OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna; GPT-5.5; ChatGPT Work; ChatGPT Images 2.0; Codex
- Anthropic: Claude Fable 5, Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5; Claude Cowork
- Google: Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.5 Flash; Gemini Spark; Veo 3.1
- xAI: Grok 4.5
- Meta: Muse Spark 1.1
- ByteDance: Seedream 5.0 Pro
- Alibaba: Qwen 3.7 Max (API); Qwen 3 235B-A22B, Qwen 3.5, Qwen 3.6 (open weights)
- Open-source: Llama 4 Scout and Maverick; DeepSeek V4, R1, V3; Mistral Large 3, Small 4; GLM-5, GLM-4.7; Gemma 3, Gemma 4 26B A4B; Phi-4; Kimi K2.6
The flagship model market no longer boils down to a single winner - each family has its own strength, and the choice depends on task, budget, and context requirements.