12 May 2026
After a number of years of work, the initial rollout of a modern suite of tools for editing and publishing RFCs, including an entirely new rfc-editor.org website, will take place in May 2026.
Since its inception in 1969 with the publication of RFC 1, the RFC Series has had a formal editing and management function that has evolved through multiple iterations, as the series has itself evolved, to the RFC Editor function that we have today. Now with over 9000 documents in the series, RFCs are authored in a variety of tools, often tracked through formal version control, published in RFCXML, and rendered into multiple presentation formats. The role of the RFC Production Center (RPC), the team that delivers the RFC Editor function, has changed significantly as a result.
In recent years it became clear that the tools used by the RPC could not adapt as needed to support these changes. The underlying database was too old, too rigid and too fragile, the editing tools were a large collection of unrelated and hard to maintain scripts, and the rfc-editor.org website was built on a platform far too old to add new functionality and improve usability. In particular, it was clear that the current tools could not support the editing or publication of RFC 10,000 and beyond.
In mid-2022 the IETF Administration LLC began a project to completely rewrite all of the RPC tools and add the new functionality that authors and the community had long been asking for, comprising the following:
A screenshot of the new RFC Editor queue website that provides improved display of document status.
The new www.rfc-editor.org website makes RFCs easier to find and read with improved search and accessibility for those with sight impairments, and is friendlier to use on mobile devices.
This comprehensive overhaul has built on the work and close collaboration of the IETF Tools team and the RPC. The RPC has dedicated significant resources to specifying their requirements, reviewing plans, testing releases, migrating data and work in progress, and training staff to use the new tools.
Progress on the updated www.rfc-editor.org website has been previously shared over the past year during community calls and with a hands-on demo during the IETF 124 Montreal meeting.
In the week beginning May 18, 2026, the initial rollout of these new tools will take place, with rfc-editor.org updated on May 20. With any rollout of this scale and degree of change we are expecting some complications and staff will be ready to address any serious issues quickly in order to minimise the impact on the IETF Community and RFC Consumers. There will be subsequent phases to this rollout in the months following and the last phase of the rollout is expected to be in December 2026.
In addition to the benefits above, this rollout provides the platform for two further improvements to the RFC Editor function. The first is that it allows us to collect the data needed for a better RPC SLA, and consultation on what that should be will start soon. The second is for an extensive set of new features for the rfc-editor.org website intended to support implementers, researchers, and others using RFCs. Work on this is well underway with the design phase completed and implementation in progress.
The update is not expected to result in any downtime for the www.rfc-editor.org website; there may be a one-day pause of submitting and processing errata.
Additional details Should the schedule change, further details will be provided closer to 20 May.
Editors note: This post was originally published on 5 May and was updated on 12 May to reflect the change in launch date of the RPC tools and rfc-editor.org website.
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