The IIIF Editors have been revising the Presentation specification to incorporate support for 3D resources and have released an Alpha version of v4, now available here: https://preview.iiif.io/api/prezi-4/presentation/4.0/. The IIIF editors are currently seeking feedback from the wider community ahead of the next in-person Editors meeting, scheduled for early December. The scope of v4, especially its support for 3D, was shaped during in-person meetings in Washington, D.C.; London; and Basel (with generous funding from the Kress Foundation for the D.C. meeting), as well as during ongoing online meetings of the Editors and the 3D TSG.
The main focus over the next year will be on moving the v4 Alpha specification to a published release. This will involve the community implementing the draft specification and providing feedback. The 3D TSG community is very active in implementing the specifications as they are developed and it is likely we will see a number of implementations while changes are discussed. This is a marked difference to previous specification releases where implementation was limited and so feedback was more difficult to collect.
The 3D manifesto and blender work has also been a big benefit to encouraging early adoption and a number of viewers are using the manifesto library to start working with IIIF. The blender IIIF plugin is also turning into a basic manifest editor and so will encourage experimentation and adoption.
In addition to the 3D TSG, the AV Motivations TSG are focused on methods for distinguishing between different types of AV annotations, such as subtitles, captions and transcriptions, to ensure that viewers can make use of these resources in a meaningful way that supports accessibility. The IIIF Editors have proposed a new property, “provides”, to support accessibility needs in IIIF v4. The group is currently developing cookbook recipes to demonstrate the intended use of “provides”. The recipes are almost ready but will have to wait for version 4 to be approved before going to the TRC. The group will then pause until version 4 is approved.
There are also two TSGs which are paused; Authorization Flow and Content Search. Both of these will have to be checked to see if they are compatible with version 4 and particularly the addition of 3D. The authorization flow is likely to be compatible and the outstanding work is on authenticating manifests and annotations. The content search specification is likely to require updating to support searching 3D annotations.
Between June 2025 and the IIIF Online meeting in January 2026
Looking toward the IIIF online conference in January 2026 the aim is to publish a release candidate version of the specifications on the iiif.io website which will require the approval of the TRC. This will allow six months of feedback and experimentation from the community after the publication of the alpha version.
During this time work can continue on the 3D manifesto and blender plugin to support more example manifests and turn them into more robust implementations.
The work on adding support for version 4 in the IIIF cookbook has already started which will be published to the live website after the version 4 specification has been approved by the TRC. The 3D TSG could also be tasked with turning the example manifests developed during discussions into cookbook recipes.
There will be work to create a version 4 JSON schema to allow validation and this should be done in concert with the cookbook work to ensure all recipes are valid. This JSON schema could then be used to create a python iiif-prezi4 library to add to the tools that support version 4.
Between January 2026 and IIIF Annual conference in June 2026
Feedback will continue on the release candidate version with the hope of releasing another final version in time for the June 2026 conference.
After the release of version 4, the community should turn to the content search TSG to start work to complete the AV compatibility and then to look at searching 3D annotations.
The Authorization flow TSG should check compatibility with version 4 and then see if there is community interest in specifying the flow for access control of manifests and annotations.
Once version 4 has been approved by the TRC there will be a concerted effort to create version 4 recipes both those that have version 3 counterparts and new recipes. This work will include taking the new ‘provides’ recipes worked on by the AV Annotations TSG to the TRC for approval.
Future specifications
The June 2026 conference will likely be a good place to get feedback from the community on where the specifications should go next.