Interop 2026: The Browser Compatibility Dream Is Becoming Reality
How Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft are actually working together—and winning.
Remember when cross-browser development meant praying to the IE6 gods and hacks upon hacks? When CSS worked differently in every browser, and “works in Chrome” was basically a shrug? Those days are fading faster than you’d think—thanks to Interop, the unlikely collaboration between every major browser vendor.
The Core Insight
Interop 2026 just launched, and it’s the most ambitious browser compatibility initiative yet. But here’s what’s wild: this isn’t new. Interop started back in 2021 as “Compat 2021,” and the results have been dramatic. We’re talking about vendors going from 60-70% compatibility to racing toward 95%+ scores. In 2025, every single browser vendor hit near-perfect scores on the compatibility dashboard.
This matters because for the first time in web history, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla are actually collaborating on a shared goal. Not competing—collaborating. And it’s working.
Why This Matters
For developers, this means:
– Less debugging time — Remember spending hours figuring out why Flexbox didn’t work in Safari? Those days are numbered.
– Faster prototyping — “Works in one browser” increasingly means “works everywhere”
– Smaller bundle sizes — Fewer polyfills and workarounds needed
But the features in Interop 2026 are particularly exciting:
Cross-document View Transitions — Remember when View Transitions (added in 2025) let you do fancy animations within a single page? Now you can do that between pages—with zero JavaScript. Imagine clicking a link and having the old page smoothly morph into the new one, all handled by the browser. This is huge for user experience.
JavaScript Promise Integration for Wasm — WebAssembly can now asynchronously “suspend” and wait on external promises. This simplifies compiling languages like C/C++ that expect synchronous APIs, potentially bringing more high-performance code to the web.
Key Takeaways
- Interop 2026 targets 18 specific features for full cross-browser compatibility
- Every major browser vendor is participating — Apple, Google, Igalia, Microsoft, and Mozilla
- The dashboard proves it works — Check out the scores: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
- This is a fundamental shift — Browser vendors competing on features, not compatibility
- Web developers benefit most — Less debugging, faster shipping, better user experiences
Looking Ahead
The web platform is maturing in ways most people don’t appreciate. We’re approaching a point where “write once, run everywhere” isn’t a JavaScript framework promise—it’s just how the web works.
That future is closer than you think. And unlike most things in tech, it actually seems to be arriving on schedule.
Based on analysis of Jake Archibald’s “Launching Interop 2026” via Mozilla Hacks