In addition to the release today of [1]Vulkan 1.4.340 with the new descriptor heap "VK_EXT_descriptor_heap" extension and three other new extensions, The Khronos Group's Vulkan Working Group has also published the Vulkan Roadmap 2026 Milestone.

The Vulkan Roadmap 2026 Milestone represents the latest extensions and specification increases beyond the Vulkan 1.4 baseline and prior annual milestones.

The Vulkan Roadmap 2026 Milestone now mandates drivers support additional features such as Variable Rate Shading "VRS" and other features including:

- Variable rate shading

- Shader clock queries

- Host image copies

- Compute shader derivatives

- Various swapchain improvements

- Higher descriptor and shader interface limits

The Vulkan Roadmap Milestones are intended for desktops, laptops, game consoles, mid-to-high-end smartphones, and other devices benefiting from the expanded feature set.

The Vulkan Roadmap 2026 Milestone can be found via [2]docs.vulkan.org . More details on the Vulkan 2026 Milestone via today's announcement on [3]Khronos.org .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Vulkan-1.4.340-Descriptor-Heap

[2] https://docs.vulkan.org/spec/latest/appendices/roadmap.html#roadmap-2026

[3] https://www.khronos.org/blog/vulkan-introduces-roadmap-2026-and-new-descriptor-heap-extension