We're still a few weeks out from the official release.  No, no official date has been set, but in the meantime, the changes and bugfixes will have to tide us over.  At least worlds opened in 1.16 Pre-release 1 seem like they might be recoverable now.  No promises there.

• Made Nether Fortresses slightly more common
• Food can now be placed on unlit campfires
• Visibility under lava is now slightly better when under the effect of fire resistance
• Piglins now hear you break a chest or block of gold (or similar) even if your are our of line of sight, and will assume you are stealing
• The game will now attempt to recover worlds broken in 1.16 Pre-release 1
• Game rule descriptions now span multiple lines if needed on the game rules screen
• A loading screen is now displayed while the game is reading world data for loading, creating or re-creating a world

• Region files are now only opened in synchronous mode on Windows, not on other operating systems. Status of this feature can be manually controlled by the following options:
• For dedicated servers: sync-chunk-writes within server.properties
• For clients: syncChunkWrites within options.txt

• MC-13823 - Leads are incorrectly positioned on certain entities
• MC-14680 - Lead is shifted upwards or downwards based on leashed entity height
• MC-27535 - Mobs can sometimes still despawn, even if named with a name tag
• MC-84610 - Off-hand hotkey doesn’t work in inventories
• MC-131286 - Attack will use right hand instead of left hand when swimming (main hand: left)
• MC-134608 - Certain Spawner Tag Conditions Induce Game Crash
• MC-143473 - Teleporting a mob while it is pathfinding will make it navigate back to where it was originally going
• MC-152157 - “Marie Stålkrantz” is not the right color in game credits
• MC-159371 - Leads are incorrectly positioned on bees
• MC-159502 - Bees don’t avoid water; killing themselves
• MC-160520 - Bee’s wandering AI tries to go through three-way corners
• MC-163921 - Placing a block while looking at redstone ore plays no sound
• MC-166346 - Transparent blocks do not render properly with tripwire above
• MC-166880 - Pufferfish spikes model seems to be broken
• MC-167043 - Enchantment glint does only apply to the handle of shields with banners
• MC-169008 - Using End portal in the Nether teleports the player to the End, but at the same coordinates the player was in the Nether
• MC-171618 - Players wearing armor take less damage from burning when standing in fire under certain conditions
• MC-171810 - Some Mojang employees are not mentioned in the credits
• MC-171969 - Fall damage is negated when stepping up after falling
• MC-172053 - Nether particles get stuck on the bottom of blocks
• MC-172105 - When a piglin is dancing, targeting or looking at an item, the chestplate the piglin is wearing does not adjust to the piglin’s pose
• MC-172110 - Texture of turtle shells is missing when worn by a piglin or zombified piglin
• MC-172871 - Unable to spawn wither in horizontal arrangement below y level 2
• MC-173310 - Observer powered texture doesn’t match unpowered
• MC-173404 - Desync when mounting an entity while sneaking
• MC-173825 - Bats break turtle eggs
• MC-176094 - Baby zombified piglin chicken jockeys can spawn riding striders
• MC-177336 - ‘Failed to access level’ when opening a world from a CIFS mount on Ubuntu
• MC-177530 - The new minecraft:attributes registry is plural, while all the others are singular
• MC-177542 - Chunk loading and saving is extremely slow when sync-chunk-writes=true
• MC-177626 - Spruce generation is broken
• MC-177694 - Zombified Piglin Spawn Egg is placed before Zombie Villager Spawn Egg in the creative inventory
• MC-177712 - Nether portal blocks do not have loot tables
• MC-177795 - Overworld music can start playing in the Nether
• MC-177863 - Shroomlights cannot be composted
• MC-177876 - Striders are now much rarer
• MC-178010 - Lena Raine does not appear in credits
• MC-178338 - Striders only get warm when lava touches their legs
• MC-179140 - Sea guardians have an odd swimming behavior
• MC-180603 - Wrong structures are generated in superflat worlds
• MC-181630 - Advancement trigger “minecraft:tick” does not support standard “player” predicate
• MC-181813 - Edit "g"ame "r"ules are not capitalized in the Game Rules menu title
• MC-181884 - Falling quickly/Flying with Elytra/Swimming with Riptide Trident and throwing a projectile will cause it to hit the player
• MC-182076 - Horse jumping sound is unused
• MC-182249 - Problems with potted_cactus.json block model file
• MC-182766 - Recipe book search function does not work if recipe book was not open before
• MC-182909 - Esc from Customised World’s Biome selection screen kicks us back to main menu
• MC-183018 - When sneaking while flying underwater in Creative, the player exits flying mode after a few seconds
• MC-183402 - Tutorial doesn’t advance when breaking nether tree
• MC-183554 - Ruined portals generated in lava lakes unnaturally displace lava, resulting in weird borders
• MC-183588 - Stray emerald block in structure bastion/treasure/big_air_full
• MC-183594 - The 5th large inner and outer hoglin stables do not generate in bastions
• MC-183599 - Some hoglin stable stair structures do not generate
• MC-183762 - Description of F3+N in help menu still describes the old functionality
• MC-183809 - Large Oak Trees replace blocks
• MC-183880 - Distracting baby piglins with gold grants the ‘Oh Shiny’ advancement
• MC-183915 - Wall Heads & Skulls are slightly offset from block selection outline
• MC-183931 - nether fortress mobs no longer spawn in extended bounding box
• MC-183933 - show_text tellraw hover events don’t work for components that need resolving (nbt, score, selector)
• MC-184093 - Using an end gateway teleports the player half a block too high
• MC-184250 - Font of the enchantments displayed in the enchanting table is italic
• MC-184608 - “Unknown biome, defaulting to plains” error upon launching the game
• MC-184612 - Import Settings “s” isn’t capitalized
• MC-184613 - End Stone generates in Floating Islands setting
• MC-184644 - Cave buffet generator generates with netherrack, even if using a non-nether biome
• MC-184653 - [Crash] “java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: value already present:” - Game crashes when worldgen dimension type presets are not unique
• MC-184675 - Superflat void preset doesn’t have a starting platform again
• MC-184699 - ‘/spreadplayers under’ does not prevent invalid values
• MC-184723 - The “i” in “World Type: Floating islands” is not capitalized
• MC-184757 - [Crash] “java.lang.NullPointerException: Ticking memory connection” on loading a dimension with debug chunk generator
• MC-184887 - You can spawn in the bedrock ceiling of a Caves world
• MC-184900 - Newline in tellraw adds a space at the beginning of the new line
• MC-184984 - Game crashes after generating multiple worlds in succession
• MC-185004 - [Crash] java.lang.NullPointerException - Crash on entering end/nether portal when dimension is removed in worldgen settings
• MC-185164 - Bottom half of icebergs always generate at y=62 regardless of sea_level
• MC-185285 - Entering the End or the Nether after creating and reentering a debug world crashes the game
• MC-185299 - Villagers cannot be summoned with a specific type unless you also specify a profession
• MC-185363 - sync-chunk-writes often takes over a minute to close a world
• MC-185417 - Maps reset on upgrade
• MC-185616 - Turtle eggs can’t hatch on red sand
• MC-185949 - Copy “C” in Click to Copy to Clipboard isn’t capitalized
• MC-186078 - Transparent items render in front of transparent blocks on some graphics cards when graphics setting is set to fabulous
• MC-186084 - Piglin head and torso floats and detaches during celebration dance
• MC-186085 - Player is unable to interact with the world after dismounting a boat while it’s moving
• MC-186091 - When you stop swimming, “diving underwater” sound occurs and vision flashes
• MC-186092 - The head of a piglin becomes offset after performing their celebration dance
• MC-186097 - Pigs are moving very slowly
• MC-186248 - “m” in Safe Mode button isn’t capitalized
• MC-186263 - “b” & “l” in Create Backup & Load isn’t capitalized
• MC-186337 - The lighting of the “Client” doesn’t correspond to that of the “Server”
• MC-186353 - The “s” and “m” in “Edit sign message” are uncapitalized
• MC-186403 - Swimming up on the side of flowing water no longer prevents the player from drowning
• MC-186492 - Lily pad placement in creative mode causes item on hotbar to flicker/vanish
• MC-186905 - "Superflat Customization" screen resets every time you open it and does not show previously saved settings
• MC-187363 - Charged respawn anchors no longer light up blocks around them
• MC-187367 - Netherite recipes show up in crafting table despite requiring a smithing table to use
• MC-187371 - Game crashes when attempting to change cloud settings on some graphics cards
• MC-187392 - Items in waterlogged stairs don’t float up high enough to be caught by a water stream above the stair
• MC-187394 - Dying Ender dragons are rendered completely white when using Fabulous graphics
• MC-187402 - Lighting in the End dimension is much darker when on a server
• MC-187405 - /seed is no longer available without cheats enabled
• MC-187411 - Particles and clouds not rendering properly behind stained glass and solid blocks
• MC-187437 - Held item is invisible in inventory menu
• MC-187449 - Zombie Pigmen/Zombified Piglins do not drop XP and rare drops anymore if killed by anything other than the player while in angered state
• MC-187466 - Mobs killed in creative mode don’t drop experience
• MC-187468 - Enchantment glint does not render for certain things on “Fabulous” setting
• MC-187483 - The advancement “Two by Two” can be achieved by just breeding turtles
• MC-187504 - Mobs do not drop rare drop items when killed by a player in Creative Mode
• MC-187552 - Piglins and Hoglins shake in the nether on servers
• MC-187585 - Dolphins with NoAI:1b can drown
• MC-187592 - Piglins constantly picking up gold nuggets and dropping them
• MC-187611 - White squares when in first person with fabulous video settings and F1
• MC-187618 - Demo world not saving after saving and quitting then quiting out of minecraft
• MC-187673 - [Crash] “java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unregistered dimension type”
• MC-187676 - “d” in Reset to default isn’t capitalized
• MC-187677 - “b” in Go back isn’t capitalized
• MC-187679 - Bees stay angry far longer
• MC-187730 - Newly spawned Zombified Piglins do not pick up the aggro of older spawned aggravated Zombified Piglins
• MC-187739 - NeutralMob.playerDied(Player) does not return if forgiveDeadPlayers = false
• MC-187796 - Wolves only use their hostile appearance after being attacked
• MC-187811 - Ender dragon death animation suddenly flashes right after it has ended
• MC-187978 - /seed availiable to all players on multiplayer server
• MC-188070 - Glitched skin while swimming (left hand)
• MC-188088 - Overworld superflat preset no longer generates with terrain decorations
• MC-188216 - Superflat biome selection overrides block selection on “Create New World” screen
• MC-188393 - K in “4k” should be capitalized