If you have a default installation of Kali, you should be checking for updates every few weeks. If you need a new version of a tool, or hear about a security update, that may speed up the timetable. However, a good practice is that you ensure all tools work before an engagement and during that engagement you should not update. As Kali is a rolling release, once in a while issues will sneak into rolling and may break a tool that is needed.

If you are using last-snapshot, you will not receive updates until we release the next version of Kali. You can be notified by watching our blog posts via newsletter or RSS, as well as following Kali on social networks. Kali has a release four times a year, and follows a loose quarterly schedule.

To update Kali, first ensure that /etc/apt/sources.list is properly populated:

kali@kali:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
# See https://www.kali.org/docs/general-use/kali-linux-sources-list-repositories/
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

# Additional line for source packages
# deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
kali@kali:~$

After that we can run the following commands which will upgrade us to the latest Kali version:

kali@kali:~$ sudo apt update
[...]
kali@kali:~$
kali@kali:~$ sudo apt full-upgrade -y
[...]
kali@kali:~$