Go 1.26 is released

Source: Go Blog

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.

• 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.

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

  can be simplified to:

  ptr := new(int64(300))

• 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, improving 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 language and standard‑library features. 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
• testing/cryptotest

There are also port‑specific changes and GODEBUG settings updates.

Experimental additions

• An experimental simd/archsimd package provides access to “single instruction, multiple data” (SIMD) operations.
• An experimental runtime/secret package offers 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 reports leaked goroutines.

These experiments are expected to become generally available in a future Go version. We encourage you to try them out and provide feedback.

Please refer to the Go 1.26 Release Notes for the complete list of additions, changes, and improvements. Over the next few weeks, follow‑up blog posts will cover some of the topics in more detail. Thanks to everyone who contributed by writing code, filing bugs, testing release candidates, and sharing feedback. If you notice any problems, please file an issue.

We hope you enjoy using the new release!