Khronos released OpenVX 1.3.2, an update to the open, royalty-free standard that uses a high-level graph-based framework to deliver portable, efficient vision processing. This focused update strengthens error handling, improves conformance, and makes OpenVX easier for vendors to implement and for developers to debug — laying the groundwork for the next major release, OpenVX 2.0.

SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles delivered a clear snapshot of the future of graphics and spatial computing—and Khronos was at the center of it. The organization presented more than 20 sessions spanning hands-on courses and in-depth Birds of a Feather (BOF) discussions on neural graphics, XR, 3D assets, rendering, and real-time shading.

New company-size-based fees make the formal OpenXR conformance process accessible to smaller implementers while preserving technical rigor.

Khronos releases the 2026 Real-Time Shading Ecosystem Survey Report, a summary of insights from over 400 shader developers, graphics programmers, rendering engineers, and tools creators. Conducted between June 16 and July 10, 2026, the survey captures a clear picture of how the real-time shading community works today — and where standardization efforts can deliver the greatest impact.

The Khronos Group has sponsored the glTF 2.0 Importer/Exporter for Autodesk 3ds Max open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license, and today has released the resulting glTF importer and exporter plugins, built to professional standards in collaboration with the community, and free for all to use.

Vulkan is deprecating host-side ray tracing acceleration structure build commands in favor of a single, device-address-based path. This aligns Vulkan Ray Tracing with the direction of DirectX Raytracing, modern engine architecture, and hardware trends. In the six years since Vulkan Ray Tracing launched, the host-side path has seen limited adoption. Developers generally found it more cumbersome than helpful, while implementers had to maintain parallel host/GPU command models that increased complexity and created friction for future ray tracing API evolution.

Any interested organizations are invited to join Khronos to help define new glTF capabilities to enable interoperable volumetric capture, streaming and playback

Since the release of glTF™ 2.0 in 2017, the format has matured into a rich ecosystem spanning mesh compression, texture optimization, 3D Gaussian splats, and more. Today, the Khronos® 3D Formats Working Group is excited to announce plans for glTF 2.1: a focused, backward-compatible revision of the core specification, built around a single motivation — making glTF work as well for large, composed scenes as it already does for single assets. Every feature in this release addresses a real gap that today forces teams toward proprietary conventions, custom tooling, or workarounds that break interoperability.

Developers building safety-critical applications can now get started with Vulkan® SC faster than ever. The new Vulkan SC SDK is a simpler way to install and use a comprehensive set of tools and utilities to leverage the Vulkan SC ecosystem. With installers for Linux and Windows, the SDK makes it easy for developers to get up and running quickly, whether they are just getting started with Vulkan SC or building on existing deployments.

On the eve of IWOCL 2026, the Khronos® OpenCL Working Group has released OpenCL™  3.1, bringing widely deployed, field-proven capabilities into the core specification to expand functionality, including SPIR-V ingestion, that developers will be able to rely on across conformant implementations. The new specification arrives into a growing OpenCL ecosystem, with implementations from multiple silicon vendors, particularly in mobile and embedded markets, and higher-level frameworks including SYCL™  and chipStar increasingly targeting OpenCL as an acceleration backend. The open-source compiler and runtime ecosystem around OpenCL also continues to mature with layered implementations of OpenCL over Vulkan and DirectX 12 — widening OpenCL’s cross-platform availability, including on platforms without native drivers.

The OpenCL Working Group has published a draft extension (cl_khr_cooperative_matrix) that brings cooperative matrix operations—a key technology for accelerating ML inference—to OpenCL, developed in collaboration with Arm, Intel, and Qualcomm. A companion extension to expose these capabilities directly in the OpenCL C language is also in progress, and the community is invited to review both drafts and provide feedback before they are finalized.

New extensions address long-standing challenges in distributed computing and runtime control, delivering the final core features for OpenVX 2.0.

The Khronos OpenXR working group has expanded its Extension Matrix to include self-reported data from middleware providers. Developers now have a clearer view of what's available across the broader XR stack.

The Khronos 3D Formats Working Group, which manages both the glTF and KTX standards, has launched an Education, Insights, and Outreach (EIO) Subgroup dedicated to equipping creators and developers with the guidance, resources, and real-world information they need to unlock glTF's full potential.

In this blog we explore how FFmpeg uses Vulkan Compute to seamlessly accelerate encoding and decoding of even professional-grade video on consumer GPUs — unlocking GPU compute parallelism at scale, without specialized hardware. This approach complements Vulkan Video's fixed-function codec support, extending acceleration to formats and workflows it doesn't cover.