The highly popular open source media player — VLC — is coming back to the iOS App Store in the next week or so. The app was mysteriously pulled from the App Store in September this year.

The team behind VLC did not reveal the exact reason as to why the app was pulled from the App Store, but many speculated that it was due to some licensing issues. Whatever the case may be, lead developer Felix Paul Kuehne says that the VLC for iOS app has already been uploaded to iTunes Connect and will be back on the App Store as soon as Apple gives it the green signal.

The chances of that happening this year though are pretty bleak since iTunes Connect is shut down from December 22-29th and any app updates or submissions during this timeframe will be queued by Apple. So, all app releases or updates submitted before VLC will be first moderated by Apple employees, which makes it very unlikely that VLC for iOS will return on the App Store this year.

The App Store is filled with plenty of free video players that can playback nearly any format thrown at them, but none of them are as popular or are as easy to use as VLC.

[Via VideoLAN Forums