Kite (KITE) one-year cliff token unlock
⚠ The date is not confirmed yet and may change.
Roughly 1.11 billion KITE tokens are scheduled to unlock in a single tranche in early November 2026, after the one-year lockup on Kite AI's team, investor, airdrop and module allocations ends. The exact day is not confirmed: the window runs from November 1 to November 3, 2026, so the date should be treated as tentative.
What is happening
The unlock covers about 1.11 billion KITE, equal to 11.1% of the ten billion total supply and roughly 43-46% of the current circulating supply. At a price near $0.1185, the tranche is worth around $131.5 million. The rule comes from the MiCA white paper of Kite AI Ltd., which sets a one-year lockup followed by a four-year release for the team and investors.
The tranche consists of five parts: 500 million KITE for the team, 300 million for investors, 200 million for the community airdrop, 50 million for modules, and about 60.4 million from the ecosystem growth allocation. The last item is not a cliff but the next slice of a running four-year linear plan that happens to fall on the same date.
The amounts are fixed, but the calendar date is inferred. CoinMarketCap lists November 1, 2026, while the anniversary of trading launch, announced by the HTX exchange on November 3, 2025, points to November 3. The white paper itself states no unlock date. After the event, around 36% of total supply will be unlocked, with about 6.3 billion KITE still locked.
Why it matters
The unlock enlarges the circulating supply by almost half at once. For comparison, the tranche equals roughly 7.6 to 11.6 days of trading volume, based on daily turnover of $11.3-17.3 million depending on the data provider. This does not mean the tokens will be sold; how many recipients hold, stake or sell is unknown. It shows how large the potential supply is relative to what the market normally absorbs.
The team and investor allocations, 800 million tokens in total, are the most relevant for sell-side questions, since those addresses could not sell for a year. The airdrop portion is widely distributed, so outcomes depend on many individual decisions. Tokens used for staking or operating roles, such as validator or module operator positions, are also tied up and cannot be sold at the same time.
Traders and holders may want to treat the date as a window rather than a single day and size positions with the scale of the tranche in mind. Little anticipation is visible in the price so far. This is not a forecast, and the actual market reaction can only be observed once the unlock takes place.
Key details
- Date: November 1-3, 2026 (tentative; exact day inferred from CoinMarketCap and the trading launch anniversary)
- Project: Kite AI
- Coins: KITE
- Category: Token Unlock
- Status: Tentative
- Source: CryptoTicker; official reference: Kite MiCA white paper