Will DJI’s next generation drones be available in the US?

For the last year, we’ve been on the edge of the fear of losing brand new DJI drones if the United States bans them from being imported. We’re also on the backend of the company’s third generation (give or take) of its main lineup of camera drones: Mini 4 Pro, Air 3S, and Mavic 3 Pro. Will these drone replacements make it to us?

Currently, there is no active ban on DJI drones. There are some unconfirmed cases of issues getting DJI drones past customs and plenty of reported cases of them being held up for a few weeks before getting cleared, but officially, DJI drones are not banned.

There is a de facto ban signed into law, however. While the Countering CCP Drones Act passed the House, it failed to ever pass the Senate. DJI, however, did get included in Congress’ final bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025. It stipulates that an appropriate national security agency conduct a risk assessment of Chinese-made drones. If that isn’t completed in one year, new drones, including those from DJI, will automatically be banned.

Whether or not an agency conducts that assessment is unknown, but DJI has at least another year to release drones to us. Since DJI doesn’t announce all of its new drones at once, we’ll have to take this on a case-by-case basis.

To make it easy, we’re going to make the assumption that no agency will complete the risk assessment and that DJI has a hard deadline of December 7, 2025, before a de facto ban is in place. However, there is plenty of time for an assessment to be completed.

DJI Mavic 4 Pro – Absolutely

We’ve already seen plenty of leaks about the fourth generation of DJI’s flagship camera drone. It has already hit the FCC database, and with an estimated release date of this spring, it’s safe to assume these will hit the US market. We’ll just have to wait and see when the official release date is.

DJI Air 4 – Potentially

We just saw our first leak of the Air 4, and it does seem to be in the early stages of development still. There’s no concrete release date for the Air 4, but it could come as soon as late 2025. As long as it comes before December – which I would say has a good chance of happening – we’ll see that hit the stores.

DJI Mini 5 Pro – Likely

Honestly, it’s a bit of a shock that we haven’t seen any leaks about a Mini 5 Pro coming in the near future. Since the Mini 3 Pro was released in 2022, the family has been punching above its weight class. This could be another late-year or fall release from the company, but it is very likely DJI will be releasing another Mini drone in 2025.

DJI Avata 3 – Unlikely

The prebuilt FPV drone has been popular not just with consumers but also with law enforcement agencies looking for a drone they can fly indoors. While we don’t expect anti-Chinese drone laws for government agencies to go away anytime soon, the Avata 2 is likely to stick around for a bit longer.

The first Avata came out in 2022, with the Avata 2 replacing it just last summer. It would be safe to assume DJI isn’t planning the Avata 3 until the summer of 2026, requiring a clean bill of health from a DoD security agency for it to hit US stores.

DJI Flip 2 or Neo 2 – Unknown

The two latest drone lineups to hit the DJI, the Flip is marketed towards beginner pilots and the Neo is for the budget “flying camera” market. Both could be products where we see yearly releases from with minor upgrades each year. However, DJI has given no indication of second-generation drones in the works. Although that doesn’t rule anything out, we’ll just have to wait and see.