Draft misses two ballot tests
The draft C++26 standard failed its Draft International Standard ballot after receiving 12 affirmative votes and nine negative votes, according to a detailed account of the result by C++ committee participant Mateusz Pusz. The ballot closed on October 23, leaving the timetable for the next edition of the programming language standard uncertain.
Approval required support from two-thirds of the 20 national bodies casting an affirmative or negative vote. That meant at least 14 yes votes. The draft also needed negative votes to remain below one quarter of the 22 votes included in the second calculation. With nine opposing votes, it missed that condition as well.
Denmark, Finland, Iran, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain and Sweden voted against the draft. France, Ireland, Poland and the United States abstained, with France and Ireland submitting comments. The complete national-body comments were not available in the supplied evidence, so the precise rationale behind every vote cannot yet be stated as fact.
Pusz expects the opposition to focus on the proposed contracts facility, noting that objections raised before the ballot concerned its design. Contracts are intended to let programmers express conditions such as function preconditions and postconditions in code. The draft describes several ways those assertions could be evaluated, and disagreement has centered on whether implementations may omit checks and what guarantees programs can rely on. That assessment remains an informed interpretation until the ballot comments are published.
Committee must choose a route forward
A failed ballot does not automatically erase the rest of the draft. C++26 also contains major work on reflection, execution facilities and library hardening. ISO procedures provide several potential routes, including circulating a revised draft, returning the text for more committee work or publishing a technical specification. Cancellation would require a broader SC22 decision.
The relevant SC22 leadership is expected to choose a course in consultation with the working group and ISO’s central office. WG21, the C++ standards committee, must respond to the comments and may need to prepare revised text. Its November 16-21 meeting in Búzios, Brazil, will be the first full committee meeting after the ballot and an opportunity to form a plan.
A formal report containing the result, decision and comments is required within 12 weeks of the ballot’s close, placing the deadline in mid-January 2027. Until that material appears, developers can experiment with draft C++26 features, but they should not assume that the contracts design or publication schedule will remain unchanged. The ballot result establishes that the submitted text lacks the required international consensus; it does not yet establish which features will be revised or delayed.
