Entering the release candidate phase is an exciting and necessary step towards releasing a production-grade 3.9.0. At this stage stability is of utmost importance. That’s why the development process described in our Dev Guide specifies that “a branch preparing for an RC release can only have bugfixes applied that have been reviewed by other core developers”. See more at https://devguide.python.org/devcycle/#release-candidate-rc
Note that due to the new PEP 602-compliant release calendar we are planning to have two release candidates: the first this coming Monday, August 10th, and the second on September 14th. As a reminder: expanding the RC phase was done to help operating system distributors include the latest release of Python in their own Autumn releases. To make it work, we need approach the release candidates with as much care as we will put into 3.9.0 itself.
Lastly, and this is a little embarrassing to admit, my laptop is being serviced by Apple at the moment due to a swollen battery. I’m ready to make the release without it should it not return by Monday. However, in case it turns out to be impossible, I’ll let you know in a separate topic.