For years already AV2 has been in development as the successor to AV1 for this wonderful open-source, royalty-free video codec. While there was talk about releasing AV2 by the end of 2025, that didn't happen but now latest indicators are pointing toward its formal debut next week.

VideoLAN recently published the Dav2d code as an open-source AV2 decoder continuing in the spirit of the Dav1d AV1 decoder. Now there's a big indicator of the imminent AV2 release.

The Alliance For Open Media's AOM Video Model "AVM" as the reference software implementation of the AV2 codec is preparing for its official release. A Phoronix reader pointed to this latest commit bumping the project version as well as the SO version of AV2. The version is bumped to the almighty 1.0.0.

Equally significant is that the change-log is pre-dated for 29 May 2026 with the change long entry of the first released version of AV2:

The timing makes sense given the recent roll-out of Dav2d and all indications have been that the AV2 specification was very near its formal release. This release right ahead of Computex happening in Taipei also allows any vendors to talk up the latest AV2 tech.

AV2 has been in draft form since January and provides for better compression efficiency and other improvements over AV1. It looks like we'll learn more about AV2 on 29 May.