TL;DR is at the bottom.

Sir Galitz did some searching on the forums and found 8 access denied threads. In the past, one of these ones turned into a patch notes thread, which means that OOO makes patch notes before the actual patch. Since there are 4 threads per patch, one for each language, that means 2 patches. The obvious thought would be a Tortodrone Patch and a Gunner Update Patch. However, for the Battle Sprite Update and new Forge and Alchemy update, they did one big thread. Then what would the other thread be, you ask? Well, every time there's been a big update to the game, we've had an event with it's own announcement thread. Therefore, the 2 threads will be a thread announcing the patch notes, and the other will announce this new event.

But the evidence doesn't stop there. If one looks at the Spiral Knights Google page, you'll find that a new picture regarding Tortodrones has been posted (This picture can also be found on their Facebook page, along with the Imgur album that was linked in the "What's coming up for Spiral Knights" thread, and their Twitter). They've done this in the page, for if you turn your head to that Spiral Knights Google page again, you'll find that they posted 2 pictures of the skylark parts before the new intro was put into the game, and that they posted a picture of Winterfest 2013 before it happened. Will we be seeing more Tortodrone pics before it happens, or will we just get it soon?

TL;DR: You're gonna have to wait 3 years for the Gunner Update.