The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) shared an update on the rollout of AV2, the successor to the AV1 codec. The specification was finalized only four months ago, and YouTube is already looking at streaming AV2 video in 2027.
According to its developers, AV2 compresses video roughly 30% more efficiently than AV1. A clip of the same quality needs less bandwidth, or the same connection can deliver a noticeably better picture.
Why YouTube
The platform has long bet on open codecs. According to YouTube engineering director Des Keane, in March 2026 more than 90% of the catalog's watch time was already served in AV1, so moving to the next generation is a natural step.
What AV2 brings
Beyond tighter compression, AV2 supports HDR, high frame rates and multi-view video. Google has already demonstrated AV2 playback in Chrome Beta, but there is no date for the stable release. Chrome engineering VP Jim Bankoski noted that the codec could also make video calls more efficient.
Intel is involved too, building the SVT-AV2 software encoder as a follow-up to its SVT-AV1 work.
The main constraint
Wide adoption depends on hardware. Hardware decoding lowers CPU load and saves battery, especially on phones, yet AOMedia has not said when AV2 will reach consumer chips and graphics cards. The 2027 plan covers only YouTube on the web; timelines for mobile and smart TV apps are unknown.
Commentary
For sites that host video, this is a good reason to plan for multiple file versions: a video tag with several source elements can serve AV2 to browsers that support it and keep AV1 or H.264 as a fallback. Until support lands in stable Chrome and on mobile devices it is too early to go AV2-only, but experimenting with encoding already makes sense.
Source: iXBT.