Python 2026: What's Actually New

TypeIs vs TypeGuard: the narrowing you actually want

asyncio.TaskGroup: no more gather() footguns

match/case beyond intro: structural dispatch for real events

Ruff + ty: one lint+type toolchain replaces four

Pydantic v2: model_validate + computed_field + discriminated unions

Polars vs Pandas: the 4-question decision matrix

FastAPI 0.110+ Annotated Depends: the modern injection shape

Anthropic tool-use loop in 60 lines, no framework needed

OpenAI vs Anthropic SDK: side-by-side, 3 patterns

Minimal RAG with pgvector: 100 lines, no LangChain

Playwright async: modern scraping when BeautifulSoup fails

Capstone: httpx.AsyncClient + connection pool + retries

PEP 649 deferred annotations: kill the `from __future__` idiom

PEP 734 multiple interpreters: real parallel Python without multiprocessing

The new PyREPL: ditch IPython for 90% of interactive Python

uv workspaces: monorepo layout that scales past one service

PEP 723 inline script metadata: standalone Python files with real dep declarations

uv tool vs uvx vs pipx: running Python CLIs without polluting your project

Anthropic Skills: teach Claude to do one thing well, reuse it forever

Structured outputs: Pydantic schema + Claude tool_use = typed JSON, no regex

Prompt caching: cut Claude bill 90% on any conversation with a big system prompt

MCP servers with FastMCP: expose your tools to Claude in 30 lines

Agent memory patterns: short-term, long-term, and when to summarise

Ollama + Python: when local LLMs actually beat the API