In React strict mode react may run render multiple times, which could partly explain what you see.

But you correctly wondered if that was the case and render was called multiple times, why was render not printed twice too?

React modifies the console methods like console.log() to silence the logs in some cases. Here is a quote:

Starting with React 17, React automatically modifies the console methods like console.log() to silence the logs in the second call to lifecycle functions. However, it may cause undesired behavior in certain cases where a workaround can be used.

Apparently, it doesn't do so when the console.log is called from Promise callback. But it does so when it is called from render. More details about this are in the answer by @trincot.

There is a second run of your render function when strict mode is enabled (only in development mode), but as discussed here, React will monkey patch console methods (calling disableLogs();) for the duration of that second (synchronous) run, so that it does not output.

The changelog shows this code was inserted in packages/react-reconciler/src/ReactFiberBeginWork.js in order to temporarily suppress logs (insertions marked with comment):

  if (__DEV__) {
    ReactCurrentOwner.current = workInProgress;
    setIsRendering(true);
    nextChildren = renderWithHooks(
      current,
      workInProgress,
      render,
      nextProps,
      ref,
      renderExpirationTime,
    );
    if (
      debugRenderPhaseSideEffectsForStrictMode &&
      workInProgress.mode & StrictMode
    ) {
      disableLogs();       // <--
      try {                // <--
        nextChildren = renderWithHooks(
          current,
          workInProgress,
          render,
          nextProps,
          ref,
          renderExpirationTime,
        );
      } finally {          // <--
        reenableLogs();    // <--
      }                    // <--

Here is a version of your code that demonstrates it really runs twice:

var i = 0;
var myconsolelog = console.log; // Work around React's monkeypatching 

function Test(): React.ReactElement {
    i++;
    myconsolelog(i + ". render"); // will output twice now!
    Promise.resolve(i)
        .then((i) => console.log(i + ". then " + Math.random()));
    return <></>;
}

In my opinion, this log-suppression is a really bad design choice.

In case it might help anyone, you can monkey-patch Object.defineProperties to ignore any changes made to the console object, effectively preventing ReactDOM from monkey-patching console.log.

const defineProperties = Object.defineProperties;
Object.defineProperties = function (o, props) {
  return o === console ? o : defineProperties(o, props);
};

Make sure to put this in development mode only (e.g. in create-react-app when process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development'), so that it doesn't end up in the production build.