The Model Context Protocol released a specification update for version 2026-07-28 that fundamentally redesigns the protocol as stateless, eliminating the need for session management and sticky routing. The update removes the initialize handshake and session ID headers, allowing requests to be processed by any server instance behind standard load balancers. The release also establishes extensions as first-class components, graduates the Tasks feature to an extension framework, hardens authorization practices to align with OAuth 2.0 standards, and introduces a formal deprecation policy to enable future evolution without breaking existing implementations.
