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YouTube to bring AV2 video codec to web player in early 2027

Owen Carter 0 comments 2 min read

YouTube plans to integrate the AV2 video codec into its web player in early 2027, offering 30% better compression efficiency than AV1 for higher quality streaming.

YouTube to bring AV2 video codec to web player in early 2027
SOFTWARE AND UPDATES

For high resolution video streaming on YouTube, things are going to change for viewers. The popular video streaming website is set to include AV2 video codec in its web player as early as early 2027. The change aims to tackle the bandwidth and quality concerns for video streams that many of us use everyday. Expect better quality videos for less data usage after the change.

YouTube AV2 video codec streaming interface
YouTube AV2 video codec streaming interface

AV2 codec brings 30% better compression efficiency than AV1

AV2 is a royalty free video codec introduced in June 2026 by Alliance for Open Media. Des Keane, director of Engineering for YouTube, recently made a statement on the company's infrastructure and confirmed that the change could come as early as early 2027. Multi-video features and better quality is what viewers get when using the new format. AV2 is essentially the next step in the evolution of AV1.

The magic of AV2 lies in its superior compression efficiency. The specification enjoys 30% better compression efficiency when compared to its predecessor AV1 across various contents and resolutions. This in turn helps the codec provide higher quality for the same bit rate or vice-versa for the same quality at much lower bit rate. Apart from this, AV2 provides support for multi-stream and multi-view sync in single bitstream for more advanced use cases.

The current decoding support for AV2 is only software-based on regular devices. It may take several years to see hardware decoder integration on regular smartphones, PCs or TVs. As of now, there's no TV that can decode AV2 which means there's no way to get instant hardware acceleration. As of March 19, 2026, more than 90% of YouTube's catalog is already in AV1 format.

Several other popular streaming services are also closely following the development. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are also looking into the AV2 format but with no specific dates for when they could adopt the new standard. Meta is also reportedly looking into adopting AV2 for their services. Everyone's waiting to see when we could get hardware support to match the software specification.

Source: YouTube plans to, TweakTown

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