Protocol

The release candidate for MCP 2026-07-28 is now available. It is the largest revision of the protocol since launch and delivers on the 2026 roadmap: a stateless core that scales on ordinary HTTP infrastructure extensions including server-rendered UIs through MCP Apps and long-running work through the Tasks extension authorization that aligns more closely with OAuth and OpenID Connect deployments a formal deprecation policy so the protocol can evolve without breaking what you’ve built, and many other changes. ...

Today, MCP turns one year old. You can check out the original announcement blog post if you don’t believe us. It’s hard to imagine that a little open-source experiment, a protocol to provide context to models, became the de-facto standard for this very scenario in less than twelve months. But not only do we hit the first anniversary milestone today - we’re also releasing a brand-new MCP specification version. Before we get to the details of what’s new, let’s do a bit of a retrospective. ...

Update (November 11, 2025): The specification release candidate (RC) date has been shifted from November 11th to November 14th, 2025. The specification release date remains to be November 25th, 2025. Release Timeline The next version of the Model Context Protocol specification will be released on November 25th, 2025, with a release candidate (RC) available on November 11th, 2025. We’re building in a 14-day RC validation window so client implementors and SDK maintainers can thoroughly test the protocol changes. This approach gives us the focused time we need to deliver critical improvements while applying our new governance model to the process. ...