On 17 November 2026, Chrome 158 reaches stable and client-side XSLT stops working in it. Microsoft Edge inherits the same engine. If any file on your site carries an <?xml-stylesheet?> instruction — and if you run WordPress with almost any SEO plugin, one of them does — the page a human opens in a browser will change that day. This site is in that group. Checked on 12 October 2026, doctor-seo.net/sitemap_index.xml carries <?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='//doctor-seo.net/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/css/main-sitemap.xsl'?>, so the friendly table a visitor sees today is produced by XSLT and will not be produced after Chrome 158.
The short version is that this matters a lot less for search than the headlines suggest, and rather more for the humans who read XML. Crawling is untouched. What changes is the readable face of every XML file you publish.
Google set out the plan in Removing XSLT for a more secure browser on the Chrome developer site, written by Mason Freed and Dominik Röttsches and last updated 2025-10-29 UTC. The reasoning is security. The document says the continued inclusion of XSLT 1.0 in browsers “presents a significant and unnecessary security risk”, describes the underlying libraries as “complex, aging C/C++ codebases” that “receive far less maintenance and security scrutiny than core JavaScript engines”, cites CVE-2025-7425 and CVE-2022-22834 in libxslt, and concludes that the risk “far outweighs its limited modern utility”.
Google’s published milestone timeline for removing XSLT from Chrome: Chrome 142 (28 Oct 2025) adds the first console warnings. Chrome 143 (2 Dec 2025) is the official deprecation. Chrome 146 (10 Mar 2026) turns on the enterprise policy. Chrome 152 (25 Aug 2026) opens the origin trial. Chrome 158 (17 Nov 2026) is the date XSLT stops working on stable. Chrome 176 (17 Aug 2027) ends the extensions too. Today’s stable release is Chrome 156.
Edge inherits the Chromium engine. Microsoft documents an “XSLTEnabled” policy in Edge 147 and lists its own deprecation as “Future release, TBD”: it has published no date.
FAQ Q: Does XSLT removal affect SEO crawling?
FAQ A: No. Crawling is untouched because XSLT is a rendering step only. XML on the wire is unchanged; parsers and crawlers never run the stylesheet.
Source: Hacker News · Résumé par HeadlinesBriefing