Time for testing: the final pre-release for 2026-11 is available

The final pre-release version for the 2026-11-01 LaTeX kernel went to CTAN few days ago. We encourage everybody to try it out on their documents (and developers on their packages) so that there will be no unwanted surprises when the November release hits the streets. Just run your documents with pdflatex-dev or lualatex-dev or use l3build check --dev if you are a developer who uses l3build for your packages.

A lot has happened over the course of the summer and the LaTeX Newsletter 44 shows this through its unusually large size (10 pages). More than six pages alone are devoted to enhancements in producing accessible documents with LaTeX. The highlights are

• information on the new ltx-talk class for accessible presentation;
• improvements to customizing theorem-like environments;
• an improved emulation of the enumitem package: most of its interface and keys are now supported;
• fixes and improvements in the template-based implementation of lists and other display environments;
• a complete reimplementation of heading templates with enhanced features and customization possibilities:
  • these new heading templates have been used to reimplement the headings in the ACM classes (so that they are now correctly tagged without any layout changes);
  • as a fun project the fncychap package has been adjusted to use the new templates and thus its \chapter designs can now be used in accessible documents.

Due to the great help by Matthew Bertucci the tagging status table now lists 2245 packages and document classes together with test files for each (we use those as a regression test suite). Out of these 1128 are already fully compatible and 318 at least partially compatible (i.e., can be used with some restrictions when producing accessible documents). The table data is automatically used by CTAN so in their classification you can immediately see if a package is checkmarked as compatible, partically compatible, or incompatible with the tagging code.

There are also many smaller improvements and fixes both in the LaTeX kernel as well as in core packages we maintain.

As always, for full details of all of the changes planned for 2026-11-01, see the draft LaTeX News 44.

Enjoy — Frank