Next Release Notes Draft
DRAFT RELEASE NOTES — Introduction to Go 1.26
Go 1.26 is not yet released. These are work-in-progress release notes. Go 1.26 is expected to be released in February 2026.
Tools
Go command
cmd/doc, and go tool doc have been deleted. go doc can be used as
a replacement for go tool doc: it takes the same flags and arguments and
has the same behavior.
Bootstrap
As mentioned in the Go 1.24 release notes, Go 1.26 now requires Go 1.24.6 or later for bootstrap. We expect that Go 1.28 will require a minor release of Go 1.26 or later for bootstrap.
Standard library
Minor changes to the library
go/types
The Var.Kind method returns an enumeration of type VarKind that
classifies the variable (package-level, local, receiver, parameter,
result, or struct field). See issue #70250.
Callers of NewVar or NewParam are encouraged to call Var.SetKind
to ensure that this attribute is set correctly in all cases.
crypto/ecdsa
The big.Int fields of PublicKey and PrivateKey are now deprecated.
crypto/rsa
If PrivateKey fields are modified after calling PrivateKey.Precompute,
PrivateKey.Validate now fails.
PrivateKey.D is now checked for consistency with precomputed values, even if
it is not used.
database/sql/driver
A database driver may implement RowsColumnScanner to entirely override Scan behavior.
log/slog
The NewMultiHandler function creates a
MultiHandler that invokes all the given Handlers.
Its Enable method reports whether any of the handlers’ Enabled methods
return true.
Its Handle, WithAttr and WithGroup methods call the corresponding method
on each of the enabled handlers.
net
Added context aware dial functions for TCP, UDP, IP and Unix networks.
net/http/httptest
The HTTP client returned by Server.Client will now redirect requests for
example.com and any subdomains to the server being tested.
net/netip
The new Prefix.Compare method compares two prefixes.
os
The new Process.WithHandle method provides access to an internal process
handle on supported platforms (Linux 5.4 or later and Windows). On Linux,
the process handle is a pidfd. The method returns ErrNoHandle on unsupported
platforms or when no process handle is available.
On Windows, the OpenFile flag parameter can now contain any combination of
Windows-specific file flags, such as FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED and
FILE_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL_SCAN, for control of file or device caching behavior,
access modes, and other special-purpose flags.
Ports
Windows
As announced in the Go 1.25 release notes, the broken 32-bit windows/arm port (GOOS=windows GOARCH=arm) is removed.