AOMedia pushes AV2 forward — Google demos Chrome playback, YouTube web streaming eyes early 2027
AOMedia reports rapid AV2 uptake: Google demoed Chrome playback, YouTube web streams start as soon as early 2027, and AV2 compresses about 30% better than AV1.
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) put a date on AV2’s arrival at scale: in an official press release dated October 22, 2026, YouTube engineering director Des Keane said AV2 streams for the web will start “as soon as early 2027.” AV2 is the alliance’s successor to AV1 — a royalty-free video codec whose specification shipped in June 2026 with roughly 30% better compression than its predecessor — and four months is all it took for the ecosystem to move from paper spec to a named YouTube rollout window. In the same release, Jim Bankoski, VP of Engineering for Google Chrome, confirmed that Chrome has already demoed AV2 playback.
Key points
- AOMedia’s October 22, 2026 release reports rapid AV2 uptake four months after the spec shipped: Google Chrome has demoed playback, which Bankoski calls “an exciting early step toward better video on the web.”
- YouTube’s Des Keane said web AV2 streams begin as soon as early 2027, citing that over 90% of YouTube’s catalog by watch time already supports AV1 as of March 19, 2026.
- Meta says AV1 is now the most-used delivery format for Facebook and Instagram video, and it will carry those investments into AV2’s productization.
Background
AV2 is the work of AOMedia, whose fifty-plus members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel, Netflix, Samsung and Tencent. Like AV1 before it, it is royalty-free and open source. The 1.0.0 specification is dated May 28, 2026 and was published in June with the claim of approximately 30% greater compression efficiency than AV1. Developer tooling is already complete: av2.aomedia.org hosts the full spec (readable online, plus PDF), a syntax-and-semantics browser for sections 5 and 6, and the AVM reference software on GitHub tagged v1.0.0; the October 22 release adds that developers can get test streams and other open-source resources through AOMedia.
The rest of the delivery chain has been moving in step. Chips&Media, a chip-IP vendor, announced a completed AV2 hardware decoder IP in May 2026, folded into its WAVE multi-format lineup and configurable from 4K at 240fps to 8K at 60fps. At IBC 2026 in September, Intel demonstrated SVT-AV2, its open-source software encoder, while Netflix’s Anne Aaron shared that AV1 now carries over a third of the company’s global VOD traffic. On the player side, Video.js 10 merged five web player projects into one rewrite in early October, so the browser playback layer has just consolidated too.
The facts
The October 22 release assigns each player a role. The checkable claims:
| Party | Statement | Source |
|---|---|---|
| AOMedia | AV2 delivers ~30% greater compression efficiency than AV1; 50+ members | Press release |
| Google (Jim Bankoski, VP Engineering, Chrome) | Chrome demoed AV2 playback; YouTube, Netflix and Prime Video are evaluating | Press release |
| YouTube (Des Keane, Engineering Director) | Web AV2 streams “as soon as early 2027”; 90%+ of catalog by watch time supported AV1 as of 2026-03-19 | Press release |
| Meta (Hassene Tmar, Technical Program Manager) | AV1 is the most-used delivery format for Facebook/Instagram video; investing in AV2 | Press release |
| Intel (Iole Moccagatta, Intel Media) | SVT-AV2 software encoder; demos at IBC 2026 | Press release |
Three boundaries matter when quoting this release. First, “early 2027” is a window — the exact wording is “as soon as early 2027,” not a committed date. Second, the release gives no hardware decode timeline; it only mentions work on “hardware readiness” in general terms, and the oft-quoted claim that hardware support is years away comes from a media outlet’s related-reading headline, not from AOMedia. Third, the 90%+ figure measures AV1 support across YouTube’s catalog weighted by watch time, as of March 19, 2026 — it explains why YouTube can switch to AV2 quickly, not how much AV2 is deployed.
What others say
The view from outside the press release adds texture. Chips&Media’s May announcement aimed its AV2 decoder IP squarely at “the North American Big Tech-led OTT market (YouTube, Netflix),” disclosed active licensing talks with major North American clients, and said the hardware RTL was available that month — IP ready, deals unsigned. At IBC 2026, Intel argued SVT-AV2 shows AV2 “moving decisively from specification to implementation”; Netflix called AV2 a major leap in compression efficiency while noting AV1’s current role; and BA Winston of Prime Video said Amazon had been involved in AV2 “from its earliest stages.” Chinese coverage followed the same day — IT Home’s October 23 report matches the release on every key figure (about 30%, early 2027, the Chrome demo). So far no source contradicts another, but no one has named a date for decode silicon reaching production either.
Our take
For teams running video pipelines, VOD or live streaming, this release is a concrete signal: the software side of AV2 can go into your test plan now. The spec and the AVM reference software are public, SVT-AV2 has been demoed, and what remains is engineering validation rather than waiting on a standard. The real wait is on devices — decode silicon in phones, TV sticks and smart TVs runs on a different clock, and Chips&Media’s IP is still in licensing talks. A sensible path is to validate software encode-decode chains through 2026 and treat hardware support as a 2027-and-later variable. Browsers have no AV2 default-toggle date either, though the image side offers a recent template: Firefox 158 just enabled JPEG XL by default, and codecs tend to follow the same encoder-browser-site sequence, only slower for video. YouTube’s early-2027 window means encode-side prep starts paying back the moment those streams arrive.