Your Feedback Shaped Our Strategic Plan
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In May, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) shared the high-level goals of our Strategic Plan. In June, we published the full draft and opened it for community feedback. We are proud to share that the PSF Board adopted the PSF Strategic Plan 2026, covering 2026 to 2031, in our July 2026 meeting.
Our new PSF Strategy page is the permanent home for the plan, with information about how the board sets priorities and how you can share feedback. We’ll publish annual review findings and future updates on the strategy page so the community can follow our progress and any changes to the plan.
Thank you to everyone who read the draft, contributed feedback, joined PSF Board Office Hour sessions, and talked with us at PyCon US. The PSF’s Strategic Plan is better for it! Learn more in our announcement blog post.
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The PyCon US 2026 Recap is available
Check out the PyCon US 2026 Recap on the PyCon US blog! This year’s conference brought together 1,901 attendees from 58 countries in Long Beach, CA, for a wonderful 7 days of community sharing, learning, and connections. If you miss the PyCon US energy, check out the PyCon US 2026 highlight reel and the 2026 YouTube playlist, and subscribe to our channel.
We can’t wait to welcome you back to Long Beach, California, for PyCon US 2027. Be sure to mark your calendars: we’ll see you there May 12-May 18, 2027! To stay up to date on news on the CFP and tickets, keep an eye on the PyCon US blog and subscribe to PyCon US News.
Python Language Summit 2026 blog posts are now available
On July 14th, 2026, 47 Python core developers and special guests sat down at the Python Language Summit, this year held in Kraków, Poland at EuroPython 2026. Many topics about the future technical direction of the Python programming language were discussed, including free-threading, Rust, garbage collectors, type annotations, and namespacing. Seth Larson, PSF Security Developer in Residence covered the event in a series of blog posts which are now available on the Python Insider blog.
Find information about the latest Python-related events on the Python Events Calendar and Python Discuss Forum.
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Engineering and Development Updates
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Announcing the inaugural Python Packaging Council election results!
The inaugural Python Packaging Council (PPC) election has concluded. With 17 candidates and plenty of lively AMA discussions on DPO, we are pleased to see the level of engagement with this first PPC election.
Congratulations to our five newly-elected inaugural Python Packaging Council members!
- Brett Cannon
- Donald Stufft
- Henry Schreiner
- Pradyun Gedam
- Ralf Gommers
We want to send a big thanks to everyone who ran for the inaugural PPC and for every voter who took the time to review the candidates and submit votes. Learn more about the election results on the PSF Blog.
PyPI now rejects new files on releases older than 14 days
Until July, a maintainer could add a file to any release, no matter how old. PyPI now rejects new files on releases older than 14 days, which closes the option of grafting a malicious wheel onto a version people already trust and install. Normal publishing is unchanged, pushing a source distribution (“sdist”) and wheels over the course of a few days still works. Adding a new Python version's wheel to a release from three months ago does not, and those projects should publish a new version instead.
Before the change went in, Mike Fiedler, PSF PyPI Safety and Security Engineer, queried how often this actually happened and brought the numbers to the Packaging Summit at PyCon US 2026: of the top 15,000 projects by download counts, 56 had published a 3.14-compatible wheel more than 14 days after the release. Summit attendees agreed the tradeoff was worth it, and Seth Larson, PSF Security Developer in Residence, wrote the patch to close this threat vector and the blog post announcing the change.
PyPI Support Request Stats and Support Security
In this quarter alone, Maria Ashna, PSF PyPI Support Specialist, has resolved and closed a total of 659 account recovery requests, 103 file and project limit requests, and 75 PEP 541 requests. Regarding PEP 541 requests, Maria has also been actively tracking data on the number of prohibited names that have been requested. The tracking includes the types of prohibited names (malware, dependency confusion, to name a few) and the levels of vulnerability these names have posed.
A refreshed PyPI interface, arriving in phases
Long-time designer Nicole Harris is leading a set of changes to the PyPI user interface. Most of it is now live, with the remainder landing shortly. The work reorganizes the pages where people look at package details and puts security information where it is actually useful: attestation and provenance status while browsing files, and a warning on any file added to a release well after the rest.
That last piece pairs with the 14-day change above. A file uploaded late is not necessarily suspicious, but it is worth seeing. Mike Fiedler contributed the provenance status and counts behind those indicators and the late-file detection, alongside reviews across the rest of the redesign. Feedback is still welcome on the discussion thread, with screenshots appreciated.
We are also working on improving our UI for PyPI Organizations, including a new landing page that helps explain more about it. If you have a PyPI Organization, you may notice that you can now fill out our PyPI Service Agreement survey for those who need specific requirements.
Download counts and download reliability
PyPI download counts have never been a measure of how many humans use a project. They can be intentionally inflated, they count mirrors and CI runs alongside people, and until recently they counted requests for package metadata the same as requests for actual files. As of August 24, only requests for distribution files are logged: a request has to end in .whl, .tar.gz, or .zip to produce a download record. Roughly 39% of the previous totals were metadata fetches, so anyone watching pypistats.org or the BigQuery dataset will see the numbers step down without anything changing about their project. The counts are more representative than before and still not a popularity contest.
Separately, some users hit intermittent 502 and 503 errors downloading files during the second half of August, which broke installs and CI. The incident report covers both causes: a canary deployment inside Fastly's network that misconfigured a single cache node, and several bugs in PyPI's own Fastly configuration around origin fallback and range requests. Downloads have been back to full function since August 28. Thank you to the community members who filed reports in the support tracker.
Preventative work on PyPI accounts and credentials
Alongside the visible changes, a steady stream of smaller protections shipped: rate limits on account registration and on email address changes, better handling of bounced mail during login, stricter validation of signup addresses, and improved verification and measurement of the API tokens used to publish. Together these changes raise the cost of the automated account creation and credential abuse that PyPI sees every day.
PSF Engineering Out in the Community
Mike Fiedler, Seth Larson, and Jacob Coffee, PSF Director of Engineering, all attended and spoke at EuroPython 2026 in Kraków, sharing learnings and experiences with others in the community.
Mike delivered "Anatomy of a Phishing Campaign", joined Seth on the panel on "Security and Ethics in the Age of Generative AI", and previewed the PyPI interface changes at the Packaging Summit. Mike also spoke on Trusted Publishing at the New York City Open Source Security User Group, and gave an introduction to PyPI and the PSF at the AWS Heroes Summit.
Mike, Seth, and Juanita Gomez were guests on Talk Python to Me for "Security of everything at PyCon 2026", walking through the talks from PyCon US's first dedicated security track.
There is far more of this work than fits in a quarterly newsletter! Staff reports covering Python, PyPI, and more, month by month, are published with the PSF Board meeting minutes.
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Announcing the 2026 PSF Board Election Results!
We’re excited to share the results of the 2026 PSF Board Election! We want to send a big thanks to everyone who ran for the PSF Board and to each of you who took the time to review the candidates and submit your votes. Congratulations to our three new and one returning Board members who have been elected:
- Ee Durbin
- Elaine Wong
- Georgi Ker
- Laís Carvalho
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing board members. Cheuk Ting Ho has been a super engaged PSF Board member, participating in many committees and helping out on many PSF Programs and projects during her time on the PSF Board. Chris Neugebauer has been a longtime board member and in particular has been the watch guard of our bylaws conversations and has always been ready to share institutional knowledge. Denny Perez has been instrumental on the PSF Board, serving on the Executive Committee, as Treasurer, and on various committees during her tenure. All three of you helped shape the PSF’s Strategic Plan for the next 5 years, which was a massive undertaking. Thank you, Cheuk, Chris, and Denny for your leadership and dedication to the PSF and the Python community. You will be missed and are deeply appreciated!
Bringing back the PSF Grants Program
Back in July, the PSF announced a limited 2026 Grants Program Funding Round, the first funding round after last year's pause, focused specifically on Python conferences and workshops taking place between December 2026 and April 2027. It was not a full reopening of the Grants Program as it existed before, rather, it's what the PSF was able to sustainably offer in 2026, given where we stand financially and operationally.
And the results are already in! The PSF Grants Work Group awarded 44 grants, expected to reach roughly 6,710 people across the funded conferences and workshops. This was a meaningful first step back for the program, and there's a lot to learn from it: the Grants Work Group is running a retrospective, and the community's feedback will be collected during upcoming Grants Office Hours, feeding into a summary for the PSF Board as planning continues for the future of the program.
Join in the new PSF Diversity & Inclusion Workgroup Office Hours
The PSF Diversity & Inclusion Workgroup kicked off monthly office hours this July in the #psf-diversity channel on the PSF Discord. These sessions are casual, text-based conversations where you can share what you're working on, ask questions, or just listen in. Sessions alternate monthly between two times of day to cover more time zones, and threads in other languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, French, Persian, and more) pop up depending on who's around. If you care about making Python communities more welcoming, come say hi! Learn more in the announcement blog post.
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The PSF is pleased to announce our second batch of PSF Fellows for 2026! The following people continue to do amazing things for the Python community:
Andy Terrel
Julius Nana Acheampong Boakye
Petr Viktorin
Sayantika Banik
Takanori Suzuki
Let's continue recognizing Pythonistas worldwide for their impact on our community. The criteria for Fellow members are available on our PSF Fellow Membership page. If you would like to nominate someone to be a PSF Fellow, please send a description of their Python accomplishments and email address to psf-fellow@python.org.
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Fiscal sponsorship is one of the ways the PSF supports the Python community. The PSF supports 20 fiscal sponsorees, including regional PyCons, Python Meetup groups, and Python-focused projects. Learn more about our Fiscal Sponsorees on our website and consider supporting the groups with a donation that may be tax-deductible in the US.
PyBeach
PyBeach 2026 is a general Python conference located in the Los Angeles area taking place on October 24, 2026. It is a welcoming, volunteer-run, community-driven event with the mission to educate and connect its attendees to one another, and promote Python within the local technology community. Claim your ticket today!
PyCascades
PyCascades 2027 will take place on March 20-21, 2027, at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. PyCascades is a regional PyCon in the Pacific Northwest, celebrating the West Coast Python developer and user community.
Celebrating its 9th year, PyCascades continues its commitment to encouraging folks of all Python skill levels and backgrounds to submit a talk proposal, especially first-time speakers. The PyCascades 2027 CfP is open now through October 26, 2026, Anywhere on Earth. Submit your idea today!
PyCascades is seeking corporate sponsors for this year's event. Check out the PyCascades 2027 Sponsor page to learn more, or email sponsorship@pycascades.com with your interest.
PyLadiesCon
PyLadiesCon 2026 returns for the 4th annual online event on December 5-7, 2025! PyLadiesCon is an exciting online and FREE event dedicated to empowerment, learning, and diversity within the Python community. PyLadiesCon welcomes sponsorships and individual donations to support this community-driven event!
PyOhio
PyOhio 2026 Organizers
The 20th annual PyOhio conference will be held July 24-25, 2027, at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, OH. PyOhio is the longest continuously running regional Python conference in the US. Come and join this inclusive, welcoming community to meet new faces, learn some tech, and gain some perspectives! Details can be found on the PyOhio website.
PyOhio is looking for new sponsors! If you're interested in supporting the conference, check out the PyOhio sponsorship page.
Learn more about all our Fiscal Sponsorees on our website.
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Are you looking for places to follow the PSF and connect with other members of the Python Community? We have a full rundown on our blog. We also invite you to follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky!
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