# Black 26.1a1

- Product: Black (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/black)
- Vendor: Python Software Foundation
- Date: 2025-12-08
- Version: 26.1a1
- Original notes: https://github.com/psf/black/releases/tag/26.1a1
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/black/releases/26.1a1
- Labels: Pre-release

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — always_one_newline_after_import option to always force one blank line after import statements, except when the line after the import is a comment or an import statement
- **fixed** — fix_fmt_skip_in_one_liners to correct # fmt: skip behavior on one-liner declarations such as def foo(): return "mock" # fmt: skip where the declaration would have been incorrectly collapsed
- **fixed** — fix_module_docstring_detection to prevent module docstrings from being treated as normal strings if preceded by comments
- **fixed** — fix_type_expansion_split to correct type expansions split in generic functions
- **added** — multiline_string_handling option to make expressions involving multiline strings more compact
- **added** — normalize_cr_newlines option to add \r style newlines to the potential newlines to normalize file newlines both from and to
- **added** — remove_parens_around_except_types option to remove parentheses around multiple exception types in except and except* without as
- **added** — remove_parens_from_assignment_lhs option to remove unnecessary parentheses from the left-hand side of assignments while preserving magic trailing commas and intentional multiline formatting
- **added** — standardize_type_comments option to format type comments which have zero or more spaces between # and type: or between type: and value to # type: (value)
- **changed** — Regenerated the _width_table.py and added tests for the Khmer language

This is a preview of the Black stable style for 2026 (#4892). Please test it and
[share your feedback](https://github.com/psf/black/issues/4042)!

The following formatting changes are included:

- `always_one_newline_after_import`: Always force one blank line after import
  statements, except when the line after the import is a comment or an import statement
  (#4489)
- `fix_fmt_skip_in_one_liners`: Fix `# fmt: skip` behavior on one-liner declarations,
  such as `def foo(): return "mock" # fmt: skip`, where previously the declaration would
  have been incorrectly collapsed (#4800)
- `fix_module_docstring_detection`: Fix module docstrings being treated as normal
  strings if preceded by comments (#4764)
- `fix_type_expansion_split`: Fix type expansions split in generic functions (#4777)
- `multiline_string_handling`: Make expressions involving multiline strings more compact
  (#1879)
- `normalize_cr_newlines`: Add `\r` style newlines to the potential newlines to
  normalize file newlines both from and to (#4710)
- `remove_parens_around_except_types`: Remove parentheses around multiple exception
  types in `except` and `except*` without `as`. See PEP 758 for details (#4720)
- `remove_parens_from_assignment_lhs`: Remove unnecessary parentheses from the left-hand
  side of assignments while preserving magic trailing commas and intentional multiline
  formatting (#4865)
- `standardize_type_comments`: Format type comments which have zero or more spaces
  between `#` and `type:` or between `type:` and value to `# type: (value)` (#4645)
- Regenerated the `_width_table.py` and added tests for the Khmer language (#4253)