The Go Blog Go 1.26 is released

Carlos Amedee, on behalf of the Go team
10 February 2026

Today the Go team is pleased to release Go 1.26. You can find its binary archives and installers on the download page.

Language changes

Go 1.26 introduces two significant refinements to the language syntax and type system.

First, the built-in new function, which creates a new variable, now allows its operand to be an expression, specifying the initial value of the variable.

A simple example of this change means that code such as this:

x := int64(300)
ptr := &x

Can be simplified to:

ptr := new(int64(300))

Second, generic types may now refer to themselves in their own type parameter list. This change simplifies the implementation of complex data structures and interfaces.

Performance improvements

The previously experimental Green Tea garbage collector is now enabled by default.

The baseline cgo overhead has been reduced by approximately 30%.

The compiler can now allocate the backing store for slices on the stack in more situations, which improves performance.

Tool improvements

The go fix command has been completely rewritten to use the Go analysis framework, and now includes a couple dozen “modernizers”, analyzers that suggest safe fixes to help your code take advantage of newer features of the language and standard library. It also includes the inline analyzer, which attempts to inline all calls to each function annotated with a //go:fix inline directive. Two upcoming blog posts will address these features in more detail.

More improvements and changes

Go 1.26 introduces many improvements over Go 1.25 across its tools, the runtime, compiler, linker, and the standard library. This includes the addition of three new packages: crypto/hpke, crypto/mlkem/mlkemtest, and testing/cryptotest. There are port-specific changes and GODEBUG settings updates.

Some of the additions in Go 1.26 are in an experimental stage and become exposed only when you explicitly opt in. Notably:

An experimental simd/archsimd package provides access to “single instruction, multiple data” (SIMD) operations.
An experimental runtime/secret package provides a facility for securely erasing temporaries used in code that manipulates secret information, typically cryptographic in nature.
An experimental goroutineleak profile in the runtime/pprof package that reports leaked goroutines.

These experiments are all expected to be generally available in a future version of Go. We encourage you to try them out ahead of time. We really value your feedback!

Please refer to the Go 1.26 Release Notes for the complete list of additions, changes, and improvements in Go 1.26.

Over the next few weeks, follow-up blog posts will cover some of the topics relevant to Go 1.26 in more detail. Check back later to read those posts.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release by writing code, filing bugs, trying out experimental additions, sharing feedback, and testing the release candidates. Your efforts helped make Go 1.26 as stable as possible. As always, if you notice any problems, please file an issue.

We hope you enjoy using the new release!

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