What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition

Christian is a member of the World Wide Web’s architecture board, the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) of W3C. As such, he has insights into what’s going on in the web platform. In his session, you'll gain insights into the latest discussions among standards bodies, browser vendors, and web developers. And you have the opportunity to report your wishes back to the Web’s architecture board. Don't miss this opportunity to stay updated on the forefront of web technologies.

Transcript

1. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Christian Liebel @christianliebel Consultant
2. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Christian Liebel Hello, it’s me. W3C TAG Web Application Manifest Editor WebApps & WebML christian.liebel @thinktecture.com
3. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition TAG Technical Architecture Group
4. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition TAG
5. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition TAG Our mission is: – to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary; – to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG; – to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.
6. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition HTTP Methods Method GET Safe ✅ Idempotent ✅ Body ❌ POST PUT DELETE ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌
7. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition HTTP Methods Method GET POST PUT DELETE Safe ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ Idempotent ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ Body ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌
8. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition HTTP Methods Method GET QUERY POST PUT DELETE Safe ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ Idempotent ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ ✅ Body ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌
9. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition QUERY method https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc10008
10. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Digital Credentials API https://developer.chrome.com/blog/digital-credentials-api-origin-trial
11. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Digital Credentials API https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1119
12. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Digital Credentials API https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/prevent-credential-abuse/#harms
13. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Digital Credentials API https://appfigures.com/resources/insights/20250808?f=2
14. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web Serial API Second Implementer navigator.serial.getPorts() .then((ports) => { // Initialize the list of available ports with `ports` on page load. }); https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/14/firefox_nightly_web_serial/
15. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web Serial API https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/431
16. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web Install Firefox supports PWA installation on Windows
17. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web Install beforeinstallprompt navigator.install() <install>
18. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web Install navigator.install({ manifest: "https://app.example/manifest.json" });
19. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web Install https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1245
20. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Web App Manifest Manifest Localization Dark Color Scheme { { "lang": "en", "name": "Email", "name_localized": { "fr": "Mail", "fr-CA": "Courriel" } } "theme_color": "blue", "background_color": "white", "color_scheme_dark": { "theme_color": "red", "background_color": "black" } }
21. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition PEPC https://wicg.github.io/PEPC/permission-elements.html
22. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition PEPC https://permission.site/pepc
23. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition PEPC TAG Review https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1140
24. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition CSS Grid Lanes aka Masonry .blog { display: grid-lanes; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(15rem, 1fr)); gap: 2rem; } https://developer.chrome.com/blog/masonry-update
25. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition CSS Grid Lanes https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1003
26. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition CSS Gap Decorations .sudoku { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(9, 1fr); grid-template-rows: repeat(9, 1fr); gap: 6px; column-rule-width: repeat(2, 1px) 4px repeat(2, 1px) 4px repeat(2, 1px); column-rule-style: solid; column-rule-color: var(--secondary); row-rule-width: repeat(2, 1px) 4px repeat(2, 1px) 4px repeat(2, 1px); row-rule-style: solid; row-rule-color: var(--secondary); } https://developer.chrome.com/blog/gap-decorations
27. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition CSS Gap Decorations https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1035
28. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition View Transitions Baseline Newly available October 2025 (single-document) https://view-transitions.chrome.dev/
29. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Element-Scoped View Transitions DEMO https://view-transitions.chrome.dev/my-patagonia-trip/
30. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Element-Scoped View Transitions https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1188
31. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebNN – Grants web apps access to the device’s CPU, GPU and Neural Processing Unit (NPU) – In specification by the WebML Working Group at W3C – Implementation in progress in Chromium (behind a flag) – Even better performance compared to WebGPU https://webnn.io
32. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebNN DEMO https://huggingface.co/webnn/spaces
33. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebNN https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/570
34. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Built-in AI – Initiative by Google Chrome – Exploratory APIs for local experiments and use case determination – Downloads AI models into Google Chrome (offline capable) – Models are shared across origins – Uses native APIs directly (full performance) https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/built-in
35. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Built-in AI Prompt API const languageModel = await LanguageModel.create(); console.log(await languageModel.prompt("Capital of Germany?")); DEMO
36. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Built-in AI TAG Review https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1093
37. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Agentic Browsers DEMO
38. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebMCP – Allows websites to expose tools to the browser or external agents – Joint effort by Microsoft and Google https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webmcp
39. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebMCP Imperative DEMO https://googlechromelabs.github.io/webmcp-tools/demos/pizza-maker/
40. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebMCP DEMO https://webmcp-maze.bandarra.me/
41. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition WebMCP API Imperative Declarative document.modelContext.registerTool({ "name": "start_game", "description": "Start a new game.", "inputSchema": {}, "execute": () => { // Do something }, }); <form id="reservationForm" toolname="book_table_le_petit_bistro" tooldescription=...> <input name="name" toolparamdescription="Customer's full name (min 2 chars)" /> </form>
42. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Priority of Constituencies User needs come before the needs of web page authors, which come before the needs of user agent implementors, which come before the needs of specification writers, which come before theoretical purity. https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies
43. What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition Q&A
44. Thank you for your kind attention! Christian Liebel @christianliebel christian.liebel@thinktecture.com