MCP's 2026 Spec Release Candidate Goes Stateless, Adds MCP Apps and a Formal Extensions Track

Summary

The Model Context Protocol has published the release candidate for its next specification, the largest revision since the protocol launched, with the final spec scheduled to ship on 2026-07-28. The headline change is a stateless protocol core: the `initialize` handshake and session IDs are eliminated, so servers can run behind a plain round-robin load balancer instead of requiring sticky routing. Client metadata now travels in request headers and payloads rather than persistent sessions. Alongsi