Mesa, an open-source library that supplies drivers and APIs for different graphics hardware on Linux, has released its latest version, 26.0.
The RADV Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs continues to see performance improvements. Since Mesa 25.3, developers have reported significant improvements in ray tracing performance.
Mesa 26.0 also removes several deprecated RADV_DEBUG environment variable options: invariantgeom, nodynamicbounds, nongg_gs, and splitfma. Users are expected to switch to the corresponding driconf variables: radv_invariant_geom, radv_no_dynamic_bounds, radv_disable_ngg_gs, and radv_split_fma.
Additionally, RadeonSI now uses the ACO shader compiler by default, thus reducing compile times. Mesa 26.0 also introduces KosmicKrisp, a new layered macOS driver that translates Vulkan calls to Apple’s Metal API.
Apart from that, this release introduces a wide range of Vulkan extensions and feature updates across several drivers, including RADV, ANV, NVK, PanVK, HoneyKrisp, PowerVR, and more. Highlights include:
- VK_KHR_maintenance10 support in ANV, NVK, and RADV
- VK_EXT_shader_uniform_buffer_unsized_array in ANV, HoneyKrisp, NVK, and RADV
- VK_EXT_custom_resolve and VK_VALVE_video_encode_rgb_conversion in RADV
- VK_EXT_discard_rectangles in NVK
- VK_EXT_device_memory_report in PanVK
- VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering on PowerVR
- VK_KHR_pipeline_binary on HoneyKrisp
Several extensions have also moved from EXT to KHR status across different drivers, including VK_KHR_surface_maintenance1, VK_KHR_swapchain_maintenance1, and VK_KHR_robustness2, where it applies.
PanVK, the Vulkan driver for ARM Mali GPUs, now supports more features, like DRM format modifiers, sampler YCbCr conversion, and sparse residency for newer hardware generations.
Finally, like every Mesa feature release, version 26.0 brings many updates to drivers and components beyond the main highlights. These updates include new Vulkan features, extension promotions, and many additional improvements in conformance and performance.
For more details, check out the announcement or review all changes here.
