Qwen3.6-27B: Flagship-Level Coding in a 27B Dense Model

QWEN STUDIO HUGGING FACE MODELSCOPE DISCORD

Following the launch of Qwen3.6-Plus and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, we are excited to open-source Qwen3.6-27B — a dense 27-billion-parameter multimodal model at the scale the community has been asking for most. Still supporting both multimodal thinking and non-thinking modes, Qwen3.6-27B delivers flagship-level agentic coding performance, surpassing the previous-generation open-source flagship Qwen3.5-397B-A17B (397B total / 17B active MoE) across all major coding benchmarks. As a dense architecture, it is straightforward to deploy without MoE routing complexity, making it an ideal choice for developers who need top-tier coding capabilities at a practical, widely-deployable scale. Qwen3.6-27B is now live on Qwen Studio, available through our API, and released as open weights for the community.

• Qwen3.6-27B is a fully open-source dense model (27B parameters), featuring:
  • flagship-level agentic coding that surpasses Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
  • strong text and multimodal reasoning ability
• You can chat interactively on Qwen Studio, call via API on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio API (coming soon), or download weights from Hugging Face and ModelScope.

Performance##

Below we present comprehensive evaluations of Qwen3.6-27B against both dense and MoE baselines, including our previous-generation open-source flagship Qwen3.5-397B-A17B. Qwen3.6-27B delivers remarkable improvements across agentic coding benchmarks, surpassing models with up to 15x its total parameter count.

Language##

Qwen3.6-27B achieves a breakthrough in agentic coding for dense models. With only 27B parameters, it outperforms the Qwen3.5-397B-A17B (397B total / 17B active) on every major coding benchmark — including SWE-bench Verified (77.2 vs. 76.2), SWE-bench Pro (53.5 vs. 50.9), Terminal-Bench 2.0 (59.3 vs. 52.5), and SkillsBench (48.2 vs. 30.0). It also surpasses all peer-scale dense models by a wide margin. On reasoning tasks, Qwen3.6-27B achieves 87.8 on GPQA Diamond, competitive with models several times its size.

Vision Language##

Qwen3.6-27B is natively multimodal, supporting both vision-language thinking and non-thinking modes in a single unified checkpoint — the same as Qwen3.6-35B-A3B. It handles images and video alongside text, enabling multimodal reasoning, document understanding, and visual question answering.

Build with Qwen3.6-27B##

Qwen3.6-27B is coming soon to Alibaba Cloud Model Studio. Please stand by until we are fully ready.

Qwen3.6-27B is available as open weights on Hugging Face and ModelScope for self-hosting, and through the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio API. You can also try it instantly on Qwen Studio.

The model can be seamlessly integrated with popular third-party coding assistants, including OpenClaw, Claude Code, and Qwen Code, to streamline development workflows and enable efficient, context-aware coding experiences.

API Usage##

This release supports the preserve_thinking feature: preserving thinking content from all preceding turns in messages, which is recommended for agentic tasks.

Alibaba Cloud Model Studio#

Alibaba Cloud Model Studio supports industry-standard protocols, including chat completions and responses APIs compatible with OpenAI’s specification, as well as an API interface compatible with Anthropic.

Example code for chat completions API is provided below:

"""
Environment variables (per official docs):
  DASHSCOPE_API_KEY: Your API Key from https://modelstudio.console.alibabacloud.com
  DASHSCOPE_BASE_URL: (optional) Base URL for compatible-mode API.
    - Beijing: https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
    - Singapore: https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
    - US (Virginia): https://dashscope-us.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1
  DASHSCOPE_MODEL: (optional) Model name; override for different models.
"""
from openai import OpenAI
import os

api_key = os.environ.get("DASHSCOPE_API_KEY")
if not api_key:
    raise ValueError(
        "DASHSCOPE_API_KEY is required. "
        "Set it via: export DASHSCOPE_API_KEY='your-api-key'"
    )

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=api_key,
    base_url=os.environ.get(
        "DASHSCOPE_BASE_URL",
        "https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1",
    ),
)

messages = [{"role": "user", "content": "Introduce vibe coding."}]

model = os.environ.get(
    "DASHSCOPE_MODEL",
    "qwen3.6-27b",
)
completion = client.chat.completions.create(
    model=model,
    messages=messages,
    extra_body={
        "enable_thinking": True,
        # "preserve_thinking": True,
    },
    stream=True
)

reasoning_content = ""  # Full reasoning trace
answer_content = ""  # Full response
is_answering = False  # Whether we have entered the answer phase
print("\n" + "=" * 20 + "Reasoning" + "=" * 20 + "\n")

for chunk in completion:
    if not chunk.choices:
        print("\nUsage:")
        print(chunk.usage)
        continue

    delta = chunk.choices[0].delta

    # Collect reasoning content only
    if hasattr(delta, "reasoning_content") and delta.reasoning_content is not None:
        if not is_answering:
            print(delta.reasoning_content, end="", flush=True)
        reasoning_content += delta.reasoning_content

    # Received content, start answer phase
    if hasattr(delta, "content") and delta.content:
        if not is_answering:
            print("\n" + "=" * 20 + "Answer" + "=" * 20 + "\n")
            is_answering = True
        print(delta.content, end="", flush=True)
        answer_content += delta.content

For more information, please visit the API doc.

Coding & Agents##

Qwen3.6-27B features excellent agentic coding capabilities and can be seamlessly integrated into popular third-party coding assistants, including OpenClaw, Claude Code, and Qwen Code.

OpenClaw#

Qwen3.6-27B is compatible with OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot / Clawdbot), a self-hosted open-source AI coding agent. Connect it to Model Studio to get a full agentic coding experience in the terminal. Get started with the following script:

# Node.js 22+
curl -fsSL https://molt.bot/install.sh | bash   # macOS / Linux

# Set your API key
export DASHSCOPE_API_KEY=<your_api_key>

# Launch OpenClaw
openclaw dashboard # web browser
# openclaw tui # Open a new terminal and start the TUI

On first use, edit ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json to point OpenClaw at Model Studio. Find or create the following fields and merge them — do not overwrite the entire file to preserve your existing settings:

{
  "models": {
    "mode": "merge",
    "providers": {
      "modelstudio": {
        "baseUrl": "https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1",
        "apiKey": "DASHSCOPE_API_KEY",
        "api": "openai-completions",
        "models": [
          {
            "id": "qwen3.6-27b",
            "name": "qwen3.6-27b",
            "reasoning": true,
            "input": ["text", "image"],
            "contextWindow": 131072,
            "maxTokens": 16384
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "model": {
        "primary": "modelstudio/qwen3.6-27b"
      },
      "models": {
        "modelstudio/qwen3.6-27b": {}
      }
    }
  }
}

Qwen Code#

Qwen3.6-27B is compatible with Qwen Code, an open-source AI agent designed for the terminal and deeply optimized for the Qwen Series. Get started with the following script:

# Node.js 20+
npm install -g @qwen-code/qwen-code@latest

# Start Qwen Code (interactive)
qwen

# Then, in the session:
/help
/auth

On first use, you’ll be prompted to sign in. You can run /auth anytime to switch authentication methods.

Claude Code#

Qwen APIs also support the Anthropic API protocol, meaning you can use it with tools like Claude Code for elevated coding experience:

# Install Claude Code
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

# Configure environment
export ANTHROPIC_MODEL="qwen3.6-27b"
export ANTHROPIC_SMALL_FAST_MODEL="qwen3.6-27b"
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/apps/anthropic
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=<your_api_key>

# Launch the CLI
claude

Summary##

Qwen3.6-27B demonstrates that a well-trained dense model can surpass much larger predecessors on the tasks that matter most for developers. At 27 billion parameters — the most widely deployed open-source scale — it outperforms the 397B-parameter Qwen3.5-397B-A17B on every major agentic coding benchmark, while remaining straightforward to deploy and serve. With Qwen3.6-27B joining the roster, the Qwen3.6 open-source family now offers a comprehensive range of models, underscoring a generation where agentic coding achieved breakthroughs across every scale — from the 3B-active Qwen3.6-35B-A3B to the API-accessible Qwen3.6-Plus and Qwen3.6-Max-Preview. We are grateful for the community’s feedback and look forward to seeing what you build with these models. Stay tuned for more from the Qwen team!

Citation##

Feel free to cite the following article if you find Qwen3.6-27B helpful:

@misc{qwen36_27b,
    title = {{Qwen3.6-27B}: Flagship-Level Coding in a 27B Dense Model},
    url = {https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.6-27b},
    author = {{Qwen Team}},
    month = {April},
    year = {2026}
}