Meta Muse
by Meta
Meta’s 2026 open-weight family and stated Llama replacement — spanning Spark (frontier), Glimmer (30B local), Code, Image and Video.
Series hub. Variants below may earn their own notes as coverage deepens.
Variants
| Variant | Released | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark | 2026-04-08 | Frontier model; explicit Llama replacement, “rebuilt from scratch” |
| Muse Spark 1.2 | 2026-08-22 | Coding model challenging Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.6 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 2026-08-10 | Open-weights agentic model that runs on local devices |
| Muse Image / Muse Video | 2026 | Generative media variants |
| Muse Code | 2026 | Coding tool built on Muse — see [[../../ai-coding/muse-code |
Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2026-04-08 | Muse Spark launches — Meta’s comeback model, replacing the Llama line |
| 2026-08-10 | Muse Glimmer 30B open-weights, local/agentic |
| 2026-08-12 | Benchmarked against Qwen 3.6 27B as a local model |
| 2026-08-22 | Muse Spark 1.2 targets Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.6 on coding |
Notes
The strategic point is that Meta retired the Llama branding: Muse Spark is described as
rebuilt from scratch rather than an incremental Llama successor.
Reception is not uniform. At least one direct August 2026 test of Muse Glimmer against Nemotron
3.5 Lightning rated one of the pair very poorly — worth checking before treating Glimmer’s
benchmark claims as settled.
Glimmer 30B sits on the boundary between open-weight and small/on-device: 30B is local-runnable
on a workstation but not on a phone.
Related
- Muse Code · Llama (predecessor) · Nemotron 3.5 Lightning · Qwen