Image model launches, Oct 1-8, 2026: which ones Sume lists

Only one of this week's image launches is a new callable row on Sume: Google's Nano Banana 2.1, generally available since October 6, 2026, which Sume lists as google/nano-banana-2.1. FLUX 3 Image, Tencent's Hy Image 3.5 Preview and Recraft V4.1 Flash are live on their vendors' pages but are not in the Sume catalog on 2026-10-08.

This list sticks to what vendor pages say, and to the Sume docs for what the router can do. Launch dates in news articles often disagree with the vendor's own page, so where the date differs, the table says which page we read.

The week in one table

What the one new row gives you

Nano Banana 2.1 on Sume lists 15 aspect ratio values, four resolution tiers (0.5K, 1K, 2K, 4K), up to 10 references and aspect_ratio: "auto" for edits. It bills about $0.075 at 0.5K, $0.10 at 1K, $0.15 at 2K and $0.20 at 4K. The retired google/nano-banana-2 id still works and runs as 2.1.

What to do with the other three

• FLUX 3 Image: use FLUX.2 pro for ratio coverage and price; move when the id appears in GET /v1/images/models.
• Hy Image 3.5 Preview: if you need many references, test ChatGPT Image 2.5 (16) or the 10-reference rows.
• Recraft V4.1 Flash: Sume's Recraft V4 row is text-to-image only and returns webp.
• Do not hard-code a new vendor id on Sume; read the catalog first.

Reading launch dates carefully

Three of the dates you will see in articles this week do not match vendor pages. Hy Image 3.5 Preview is dated 2026-09-22 in the OpenRouter listing (id suffix 20260922), not October. Recraft's blog places V4.1 Flash in September 2026. Only Nano Banana 2.1 has a launch date on a vendor page in the window, October 6.

That matters for planning: a model that launched in September has had weeks for its price and behavior to settle, while a model that went GA on Tuesday may still have a pricing change ahead. Run your own test before you commit.

A routine for next week

Keep a script that diffs the catalog id list against the last run, and run it daily. When a row appears, read its endpoints record, make one low-cost test request, and compare the billed amount before you let production traffic use it. That takes about 15 minutes and costs one image.

For new vendor launches, wait for two things before you plan around them: a vendor page with a dated id and a pricing line, and a Sume catalog entry. The first tells you the model exists, the second tells you you can call it.

What Sume does not do

Sume does not preview unreleased rows and does not promise a date for any model. The router lists a model when it has shipped to the catalog, with price and limits published at the endpoints route.