What exactly changed in the MCP specification?

The initialize/initialized handshake and the Mcp-Session-Id header were removed. Clients now send protocol version, identity and capabilities in a per-request _meta field.

How widely is MCP used?

MCP's July 2026 official announcement reported nearly 500 million monthly downloads across major SDKs, with TypeScript and Python each surpassing 1 billion cumulative downloads.

Anthropic donated the specification to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) in December 2025, shifting governance from a single company to a vendor-neutral foundation.

ITmedia AI＋46m agoNov 10, 2026, 06:01 JST

MCP goes stateless in biggest spec revision yet

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3 Key Points

What happened
The July 28, 2026 revision removed the initialize/initialized handshake and the Mcp-Session-Id header; clients now send protocol version, identity and capabilities in a per-request _meta field.
Why it matters
With no session state held on individual server instances, any server can handle any request, making horizontal scaling and round-robin load balancing straightforward — MCP servers become ordinary web parts rather than special infrastructure, though application teams must now manage state themselves.

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FAQ

What exactly changed in the MCP specification?: The initialize/initialized handshake and the Mcp-Session-Id header were removed. Clients now send protocol version, identity and capabilities in a per-request _meta field.
How widely is MCP used?: MCP's July 2026 official announcement reported nearly 500 million monthly downloads across major SDKs, with TypeScript and Python each surpassing 1 billion cumulative downloads.
Who governs MCP now?: Anthropic donated the specification to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) in December 2025, shifting governance from a single company to a vendor-neutral foundation.

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