# Announce: Rakudo compiler, Release #195 (2026.07)

On behalf of the Rakudo development team, we announce the
July 2026 release of Rakudo #195. Rakudo is an implementation of
the Raku[^1] language.

The source tarball for this release is available from
<https://rakudo.org/files/rakudo>.
Precompiled archives will be available shortly.

New in 2026.07:

+ Improvements:
    + Make an unrecognized <| > regex boundary a no-op before 6.e and an error after
    + Bump mimalloc to v2.4.1
    + Explicitly mention the existence of the gdb python plugin
+ Fixes:
    * Make Blob stringification agree across every route
    + Render a parameter's declarator doc once under --doc
    + Compile the proxy readers with the Raku HLL
    + Smartmatch a Junction topic over its eigenstates
    + Smartmatch against a concrete Match matcher returns it as-is
    + Negated smartmatch against a Regex binds the caller's $/
    + Map a container-held foreign value when binding a value parameter
    + Give the experimental macros flag a load-independent value
    + NativeCall: enforce definiteness constraints on native signatures

+ Additions:
    Add Date/Datetime.yyyy-mm / mm-dd methods

+ RakuAST:
    + A *lot* of work on performance optimizations, and feature parity with the legacy compiler for ecosystem modules.
 
+ Internal:
    + Handle the runtime Failure in the constant-folding warn test
    + Remove dead code from Perl6::ModuleLoader

The following people contributed to this release:

Nick Logan, Timo Paulssen, Will Coleda, Elizabeth Mattijsen, Daniel Green,
Luc St-Louis, w3lld1

This release implements 6.c and 6.d versions of the Raku specification.
6.c version of the language is available if you use the `use v6.c`
version pragma, otherwise 6.d is the default.

Upcoming releases in 2026 will include new functionality that is not
part of 6.c or 6.d specifications, available with a lexically scoped
pragma. Our goal is to ensure that anything that is tested as part of
6.c and 6.d specifications will continue to work unchanged. There may
be incremental spec releases this year as well.

If you would like to contribute or get more information, visit
<https://raku.org>, <https://rakudo.org/community>, or join us
on IRC (#raku on Libera), or the Discord.

Additionally, we invite you to make a donation to The Raku Foundation
to sponsor Raku development: <https://rakufoundation.org/donate>
(put “Raku Core Development Fund” in the ‘Purpose’ text field)

The next release of Rakudo (#196), is tentatively scheduled for 2026-08-22.

The development team appreciates feedback! If you’re using Rakudo, do
get back to us. Questions, comments, suggestions for improvements, cool
discoveries, incredible hacks, or any other feedback are welcome
through the channels listed above.

[^1]: See <https://raku.org/>
