We sent the 2026-06-01 release of the LaTeX kernel to CTAN at the weekend, and its already available in TeX Live (MiKTeX should follow soon).

News from the tagging project

Progress in embedding tagging code as part of a more general overhaul continues. The implementation of block structures, such as theorems, and headings (sections), has been updated. We are well on the way to providing a flexible interface that many document authors will be able to use without needing additional code or packages.

This work is also an opportunity to look back at (long-standing) LaTeX code and to see where there are issues. As well as refining some spacing, we have addressed a long-standing technical wrinkle: (mis)using math mode simply to align material vertically. This ‘fake math’ is a serious tagging issue but also shows up where the user wants, for example, to apply a color change to all mathematics. With this release, the use of math mode is essentially restricted to ‘true math’.

Work on better supporting languages has been ongoing, with new language and other-languages keys for \DocumentMetadata; these support standard BCP-47 strings such as en-GB.

Working on templates has prompted us to further revise some concepts that have been added to the kernel in recent years, to align the code more closely with the most natural pathways for users.

Other improvements and changes

Work of course is not restricted to tagging. There are further improvements to copy-paste of symbols, several bug fixes for corner cases in amsmath, and more language support for varioref. At the lower level, work on the L3 programming layer continues; notably here, we have made adjustments to better support the up engine in creating programmatic strings.

The newsletter also covers various other small enhancements or corrections that we provide with the June release.

Enjoy – Joseph