Since the release of glTF™ 2.0 in 2017, the format has matured into a rich ecosystem spanning mesh compression, texture optimization, 3D Gaussian splats, and more. Today, the Khronos® 3D Formats Working Group is excited to announce plans for glTF 2.1: a focused, backward-compatible revision of the core specification, built around a single motivation — making glTF work as well for large, composed scenes as it already does for single assets. E

The Khronos Group is a consortium of technology companies and industry experts that develops open standards for graphics, compute, and vision processing. Through initiatives like Vulkan, OpenGL, and WebGL, Khronos Group defines cross-platform APIs for accelerating graphics rendering and computational tasks across diverse hardware platforms. Developers can learn about Khronos Group's standards, participate in working groups, and leverage open APIs for building high-performance graphics and compute applications.

Khronos

Khronos announces glTF 2.1, a backward-compatible revision of the 3D format specification focused on large, composed scenes. Key additions include External Assets (referencing and instantiating other glTF files), Packaging (self-contained multi-file bundles), Shapes (implicit geometric primitives), Bounding Volume Hierarchies, and Unified File References via a new top-level `files` array. Quality-of-life improvements include thumbnail support, a 64-bit GLB format lifting the 4 GiB size cap, promoted extension functionality (WebP, emissive strength, mesh quantization, node visibility), non-sequential attribute indices, expanded accessor component types (DOUBLE, HALF_FLOAT, INT64), and Unique IDs for stable cross-file object addressing. The multiple-scenes pattern is formally deprecated. The spec is being developed openly on GitHub with community input, and a live discussion is planned at SIGGRAPH 2026.

Introducing glTF 2.1 with Complex Scenes