The first official 2.50 release is set to be released tomorrow. This is a very exciting time for Blender heads, this has been in development for over two years! Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done, this is only an alpha release, but it just goes to show how good the development team behind Blender is. And the community!

Congrats to all and keep up the good work!

When released you will be able to download here: http://blender.org/download

Test builds can already be downloaded here: http://graphicall.org

You can find more information in the release logs here: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250

Note: these logs are not complete yet, Matt Ebb is still working through them but they are a good place to start if you are not familiar with everything that has changed in 2.5.