Google's Latest 'Gemini 3.5 Flash' AI Model Announced at I/O 2026

Google has officially taken the wraps off Gemini 3.5 Flash at Google I/O 2026. The company claims the new model is its fastest and most capable Flash model yet. Gemini 3.5 Flash offers the best in terms of reasoning and coding capabilities, but at the same time, it is able to maintain the superfast processing speeds that the Flash range is famous for. In addition, Google claims that the new model is capable of running four times faster than its counterparts, but for just half the price.

Gemini 3.5 Flash is Google’s strongest agentic and coding model yet

In the era of fierce competition among OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, Gemini 3.5 Flash looks like an attempt to demonstrate that speed does not have to compromise intelligence anymore.

During the presentation, Google revealed several benchmark results that seem rather impressive. For example, in the Terminal-Bench 2.1 test evaluating coding skills, Gemini 3.5 Flash achieved 76.2%, significantly outperforming Gemini 3.1 Pro (70.3%) and leaving far behind its predecessor Gemini 3 Flash (58%).

Another point to be mentioned is improved agentic workflow performance. As for GDPval-AA Elo, Gemini 3.5 Flash scored 1656, while Gemini 3.1 Pro got only 1314. On the other hand, in the MCP Atlas scaled tool usage test, Gemini 3.5 Flash received 83.6%, once again exceeding other Gemini models.

One should note that Google compares Gemini 3.5 Flash not only with its own products but also with competing models such as GPT-5.5 or Claude Opus 4.7. Although GPT-5.5 still demonstrates some superiority in coding and abstract reasoning tasks, Gemini 3.5 Flash proves itself competitive in most areas.

Availability

Gemini 3.5 Flash is generally available via Google Antigravity, the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Android Studio, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and Gemini Enterprise. It’s also now available to everyone in the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search. On behalf of the entire Gemini team, we can’t wait to see what you build.