Update on the Next MCP Protocol Release (blog.modelcontextprotocol.io)

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) team announced a release candidate on November 11, 2025 and a final spec on November 25, 2025, with a 14-day RC validation window for implementors and SDK maintainers to test changes under a new governance model. Over the summer they formalized governance (including a Specification Enhancement Proposal process), launched working and interest groups, and previewed an MCP Registry—an open catalog/API for discovering MCP servers and supporting public/private sub-registries. These moves aim to make decision-making transparent and to decentralize ownership across the ecosystem. Technically, the November release focuses on five priorities that matter for production AI deployments: async operations (SEP-1391) so servers can kick off long-running tasks and clients can poll for results; improved statelessness and scalability to ease horizontal scaling and session handling (building on but extending Streamable HTTP); server identity via .well-known metadata to enable capability discovery without connecting; a curated set of official extensions for industry-specific patterns; and a standardized SDK tiering system to clarify compliance and maintenance guarantees. The announcement includes a call for contributors—especially for TypeScript and Swift SDK maintenance, registry tooling (Go), and client feedback—to ensure the protocol evolves with real-world needs.