The release will be deployed over a weekend, one week after Salesforce updates the production...

The best option is to ensure the sandbox will be on the release preview, which means it will be upgraded to the new platform release before the production environment. This will allow the team to test the deployment in a realistic scenario and catch any potential issues. Option A is not ideal, as the staging and production support sandboxes will not be on the same platform version as the production environment. Option C is also not ideal, as the production support sandbox will not be on the same platform version as the production environment. Option D is risky, as the staging sandbox refresh may not complete in time for the go-live.