C++26

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C++26 is the informal name for the open standard revision of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 14882 standard for the C++ programming language that follows C++23, officially shipped by WG21 on 28 March 2026. The final draft of C++26 was N5050.

Papers proposed and adopted into the standard by the C++ Standards Committee and minutes of the standardization meeting held at Sofia, Bulgaria and online in June 2025 are publicly available. The draft wording is feature complete, and is being sent out for international comment ballot. After resolving some ballot comments at the November 2025 standardization meeting in Kona, Hawaii, the C++ Standards Committee finished expected resolving ballot comments, technically finalized the draft, and send the draft out for final approval ballot at the following standardization meeting in London, United Kingdom from 23 to 28 of March 2026.

Experimental and standard compilers implementing some of the upcoming features can be tried on short code snippets through the Compiler Explorer. Some of the compiler variants are distinguished only by the short identifiers of papers proposing the new features they implement, such as "P3372" for constexpr containers and adaptors.

No compiler fully supports C++26 yet, or defaults to it. As of 30 April 2026, GCC supports most of the C++26 features beginning with GCC 16.1.

As of 2026, C++26 is the next revision of the C++ programming language standard. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG21 is responsible for the standardization process. N5046 was the May 2026 working draft (replacing N5032); the Draft International Standard was not completed for ISO ballot at that time.

The compiler implementations started supporting C++26 experimentally even before the standard was finalised. GCC has implemented some C++26 features with the flag -std=c++26, but is still experimental as the ISO C++26 standard was finalizing its standardization.

Features

Changes that have been accepted into C++26 include:

Reception

Several people issued trip reports from the Sofia C++ Standards Committee meeting at which the draft became feature complete, and from the International C++ Conference, C++ On Sea, immediately afterward.

All highlighted the introduction of compile-time reflection in particular as a major change. In particular, Herb Sutter, chair of the ISO C++ Standards Committee and Hana Dusíková, assistant chair of the "Language Evolution" working group of the C++ Standards Committee, described the potential impacts for C++ reflection as a "whole new language." Sutter further described C++26 as the most 'compelling' release since C++11.

The contracts feature was criticised by some in the C++ committee, for varying reasons (such as questioning its safety, complexity, or implementation details); this has been such a point of contention that the October 2026 final publication was disapproved, apparently over the inclusion of contracts for C++26.

The trivial relocatability feature, which proposed new specifiers trivially_relocatable_if_eligible and replaceable_if_eligible, was removed from C++26 due to implementation bugs and deferred to a later standard.

See also

• C29 (C standard revision)

References

External links

• Compiler support for C++26 features