What MkDocs 2.0 means for your documentation projects
Last update: March 10, 2026 – see update log.
Three weeks ago, MkDocs 2.0 was announced – a ground-up rewrite of the documentation tool tens of thousands of projects rely on, introducing potentially significant breaking changes.
Material for MkDocs depends on MkDocs as its underlying framework and central dependency. We maintain Material for MkDocs, but we have no control over MkDocs itself.
We've taken the time to thoroughly evaluate and test the MkDocs 2.0 pre-release and want to share our findings, including what it might mean for your documentation projects, and where Zensical, our new static site generator that is compatible with MkDocs 1.x, fits into the picture.
If you've missed it: MkDocs 1.x is unmaintained, with issues and PRs piling up and no releases in the past 18 months, and seemingly no plans to fix long-standing issues like live-reload problems. More importantly, it's unclear whether security issues will be addressed, and whether the project will receive any updates at all in the future.
Please note that MkDocs 2.0 is still in pre-release, and the information in this article is based on the current state of the project. We keep it updated as we learn more.