SDL 2.26 Released, SDL3 Development Now Underway

SDL 2.26 has been officially released as the latest version of this widely-used library by cross-platform games and other software wishing to abstract various hardware/software differences between systems. With the release of SDL 2.26 out, SDL 3.0 is now officially under development.

SDL 2.26 features simulated vsync for the SDL2 software renderer, new joystick hints, the HIDAPI driver now supports Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 controllers, X11 primary selection clipboard API support on Linux, a new hint on Linux around mouse pointer warp emulation under Wayland, IME soft keyboard input support on Android, and more. There is also a lot of bug fixing with SDL 2.26.

Downloads and more details on SDL 2.26 can be found via GitHub.

As noted a few days back, with SDL 2.26 now being released, SDL3 is officially entering development. SDL 3.0 will likely see Wayland preferred over the X.Org Server by default, PipeWire by default, and other modernization work and cleaning up of APIs. There is also likely work around better ANGLE support, video input APIs, async file I/O, and various other features.

Since the SDL 2.26 release, already being merged is starting to change all of the "SDL 2" references over to "SDL 3" for what will be this next eventual major release to this widely-used library by Steam games and other cross-platform titles.