W3C - News

• First Public Working Draft: Recognized Entities v1.0

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of Recognized Entities v1.0. This specification describes a data model with which one or more recognized entities, such as one or more persons and/or organizations, can be described as known to perform specific actions, such as issuing or verifying a verifiable credential. The data model enables the publication or direct sharing of such information, providing a cryptographically-verifiable and privacy-preserving mechanism through which a holder can demonstrate that an entity whose credential they are using is recognized within a particular ecosystem.The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues, the reference of which is also in the header of the document.

• W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory Board

  The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill four seats on the W3C Advisory Board (AB), starting 1 July 2026: Daniel Appelquist, Wei Ding, Elena Lape, and Andrew Wafaa. They join continuing AB participants, Theresa O'Connor, Hiroshi Ota, Avneesh Singh, Hidde de Vries, Song Xu, and Brent Zundel.Many thanks to the departing participants for their contributions to the AB, Max Gendler and Tatsuya Igarashi, whose terms end at the end of June 2026.Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board also serves the W3C Members by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings, soliciting Member comments on such issues, and proposing actions to resolve these issues. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. As part of a W3C Council, members of the Advisory Board hear and adjudicate on Submission Appeals and Formal Objections. For several years, the AB has conducted its work in a public wiki. The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user.

• W3C Establishes Representative Office in Shenzhen, China

  W3C today announced the establishment of a W3C Representative Office in Shenzhen, China. An opening ceremony was held in Shenzhen on 18 April 2026, a few days before the celebration of the 20th anniversary of W3C in China.The W3C China Representative Office has a primary role in legal compliance, and will operate as a branch of W3C Inc., working with W3C’s existing Partner Beihang University to maintain a global platform for web technology standard innovation and collaboration.The establishment follows unanimous approval by the W3C Board of Directors and represents a significant milestone in the Consortium’s long-standing collaboration with the Chinese web community, a phase that is built on decades of trust, shared innovation, and a mutual commitment to an open, neutral, secure, accessible and truly World Wide Web. Please read more in our Press Release.

• First Public Working Draft: Long Animation Frames API

  The Web Performance Working Group published today a First Public Working Draft of Long Animation Frames API. This document defines an API that web page authors can use to detect presence of "long animation frames" that monopolize the UI thread for extended periods of time and block other critical tasks from being executed - e.g. reacting to user input.

• First Public Working Draft: CBOR-LD 1.0

  The JSON-LD Working Group published today a First Public Working Draft of CBOR-LD 1.0. CBOR is a compact binary data serialization and messaging format. This specification defines CBOR-LD 1.0, a CBOR-based format to serialize Linked Data. The encoding is designed to leverage the existing JSON-LD ecosystem, which is deployed on hundreds of millions of systems today, to provide a compact serialization format for those seeking efficient encoding schemes for Linked Data. By utilizing semantic compression schemes, compression ratios in excess of 60% better than generalized compression schemes are possible. This format is primarily intended to be a way to use Linked Data in storage and bandwidth constrained programming environments, to build interoperable semantic wire-level protocols, and to efficiently store Linked Data in CBOR-based storage engines.

• Upcoming: W3C Workshop on the Future of ODRL

  W3C announced a Workshop on the Future of ODRL, to be held on 22–23 June 2026 in London, UK, and online.Since becoming a W3C Recommendation in 2018, ODRL has gained increasing recognition and adoption across: Data space governance frameworksIndustry consortia and international standardsDigital media and creative content providersFinancial sectorsAt the same time, important challenges remain:Policy interoperability across domainsRuntime enforcement and compliance verificationProfile development and extension governanceTooling maturity and usabilityIntegration with emerging Web standardsThis workshop provides a forum to examine these topics collaboratively and define next steps. Possible topic areas for the workshop may include: ODRL Adoption & Industry ExperienceInnovation and Semantics of ODRLInteroperability & ArchitectureRoadmap & Community DevelopmentIf you agree to work on the goals above and have experience and/or expertise in the topic areas above, please apply to the workshop. Proposals are either position papers of up to 4 pages or scientific papers with up to 10 pages.The workshop will include: Presentations (10–15 minutes each)Moderated discussion sessionsThematic breakout discussionsConsolidated reporting of outcomesAttendance is free for all invited participants and is open to the public, whether or not W3C members.Please submit your proposal by sending email to odrl-ws-submission@w3.org before 27 May 2026. The Program Committee will review submissions and shape the final agenda. For any inquiries, you may contact the Chairs directly using the same email address.

• First Public Working Drafts for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) 1.0 Authentication Suite

  The Linked Web Storage Working Group has published the following four First Public Working Drafts: LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: OpenID Connect - This document defines an OpenID Connect-based authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling LWS applications to integrate with OpenID providers.LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: SAML 2.0 - This document defines a SAML-based authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling LWS applications to integrate with SAML 2.0 identity providers.LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: Self-signed Identity using Controlled Identifiers - This document defines an authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling clients that are able to sign their own identity tokens to integrate with LWS.LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: Self-signed Identity using did:key - This document defines an authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling clients that are able to sign their own identity tokens to integrate with LWS while using agent identifiers with the did:key method.

• Five First Public Working Drafts published by the Verifiable Credentials Working Group

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published five First Public Working Drafts today. These drafts fall into two groups.The first group consists of new minor versions of published Recommendations that are maintained by the Working Group, without any significant change. These are:Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.1: This specification describes mechanisms for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of verifiable credentials and similar types of constrained digital documents using cryptography, especially through the use of digital signatures and related mathematical proofs.Data Integrity EdDSA Cryptosuites v1.1: This specification describes Data Integrity cryptographic suites for use when creating or verifying a digital signature using the Ed25519 instantiation of the Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA).Data Integrity ECDSA Cryptosuites v1.1: This specification describes Data Integrity cryptosuites for use when generating a digital signature using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).The second group consists of new specifications, listed as new deliverables in the new Working Group Charter. These are:VCALM v1.0: This specification provides data model and HTTP protocols to issue, verify, present, and manage Verifiable credentials used in a credential ecosystem.Verifiable Credential Barcodes v1.0: This specification describes a mechanism to protect optical barcodes, such as those found on driver's licenses (PDF417) and travel documents (MRZ), using Verifiable Credentials. The Verifiable Credential representations are compact enough such that they fit in under 150 bytes and can thus be integrated with traditional two-dimensional barcodes that are printed on physical cards using standard printing processes.The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues, whose reference is in the header of the respective documents.

• First Public Working Draft: CSS Image Animation Module Level 1

  The CSS Working Group published today a First Public Working Draft of CSS Image Animation Module Level 1. This CSS module proposes facilities to control the rendering of animated images.CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, etc.

• First Public Working Draft: Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.1

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group published today a First Public Working Draft of Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.1. A verifiable credential is a specific way to express a set of claims made by an issuer, such as a driver's license or an education certificate. This specification describes the extensible data model for verifiable credentials, how they can be secured from tampering, and a three-party ecosystem for the exchange of these credentials that is composed of issuers, holders, and verifiers. This document also covers a variety of security, privacy, internationalization, and accessibility considerations for ecosystems that use the technologies described in this specification.