When will the next version of Opera be released? The answer is very simple: When It's Ready — or: a release will be released, mostly because of fear that the word will be taken as a promise and the promise can't be kept and people will get angry (well, angrier).
Once upon a time, the Opera employees weren't so uptight. During the 4.0x beta cycles, this question was often asked of Opera 4.03, and the insiders ventured to say RSN (Real Soon Now). Guess what? We're still waiting for version 4.03 when it was supposed to be out RSN of 6 years ago! So now the answer is always: WIR!
A release is never late. Nor is it early. It arrives precisely when they mean it to.
In order to avoid this kind of non-information on the Opera Newsgroups, Forums and IRC channels please don't ask the question, as it is annoying everybody that is trying to use these channels for mature feedback on the product.
If you're trying to build up pressure to get the release earlier: it won't work. (Especially if you threaten to switch to Firefox.)
Even if it would work there is a larger chance the release will contain more bugs and less features than you had expected, which can hardly be in your own interest.
Things take time (TTT). Enjoy the current release and be patient.
You'll be informed on the newsgroups, support fora and IRC when it's ready.
A new variation on WIR from Jonny Axelsson:
SVG is something that we've already stated would nice to support natively. The obvious follow-up question would be "When?", with the obvious retort "Wouldn't you like to know."
Yet another variation on WIR from Jonny Axelsson:
Need I tell you that "soon, if not by Tuesday" instantly became my favourite answer to the eternal question of when the next version of Opera is coming out?