The Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is nearing its largest revision since the standard first appeared. According to the available details, maintainers locked the release candidate on May 21, and the final specification is expected on July 28.
The headline change is a major simplification of how MCP connections work. The update removes both sessions and the initialization handshake, which had been central pieces of how many existing servers were designed. In practice, that means developers may need to rethink server architectures that were built around longer-lived connection state.
Under the revised approach, state is shifted into handles rather than being managed through session machinery. The change also makes remote MCP servers behave more like stateless HTTP services, a move that could make implementations easier to scale and reason about, especially in distributed environments.
Even from the limited preview, the direction is clear: MCP is moving toward a leaner, less stateful model. For teams building tools and servers around the protocol, this update could mark an important transition point as they prepare for the final spec and evaluate how much of their current infrastructure needs to change.
