A New Python Packaging Council and Other News for May 2026
April gave Python developers a new governing body. PEP 772 was accepted on April 16, creating a dedicated Python Packaging Council that will make binding decisions about packaging standards and tools. After years of informal coordination through the Python Packaging Authority (PyPA), the packaging community now has its own elected five-member council with authority comparable to the Steering Council.
On the release side, Python 3.15.0 alpha 8 dropped with a refreshed JIT delivering 6–7 percent speedups on x86-64 Linux and 12–13 percent on AArch64 macOS. The core team also decided to revert 3.14’s incremental garbage collector after production reports of runaway memory use, with the fix landing in the upcoming 3.14.5 patch release. The