PDF Association
Home of the worldwide PDF technical community
Originally launched as the PDF/A Competence Center in 2006, the organization’s original function was to promote common understanding of the PDF/A archival subset of the PDF format. It was during this period that the PDF Association developed its first set of PDF/A Technical Notes and the Isartor Test Suite, critical building-blocks for modern implementations of the PDF/A specification.
In 2009 the ISO confirmed the PDF/A Competence Center’s status as a category A liaison with ISO TC 171 SC 2, allowing the organization to act as a conduit for information between members and the ISO committees managing PDF and PDF subset standards.
In 2011 the PDF/A Competence Center became the PDF Association, and formally expanded its scope to include all PDF and PDF-related standards.
The mission of the PDF Association is to promote awareness and adoption of ISO-standardized PDF technology worldwide.
Learn more about us, who’s on the Board of Directors, get in touch with the staff, learn about the benefits of membership and how to join the PDF Association!
Staff
Published Articles
A PDF icon doesn’t mean that the link goes to a PDF | Register for PDF Week London … Read more
February 2026, Duff Johnson
Now marking its 20th year in operation, the PDF Association evolved from a collaboration of five German companies … Read more
PDF’s stakeholders and developers span the globe. Here, we visualize the community’s reach.
HuggingFace echoes SafeDocs with new PDF datasets | Chrome does NOT sign or annotate your PDF! | ONIX … Read more
December 2025, Peter Wyatt
We report on the technical aspects of the PDF files released by the US Department of Justice in … Read more
December 2025, Duff Johnson
I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and CoPilot about PDF’s future. They agree that PDF isn’t fading – it’s … Read more
Chrome’s U-turn on JPEG-XL – thanks (in part) to PDF! | PDF errata makeover | ZUGFeRD 2.4 / … Read more
December 2025, Peter Wyatt
Starting In 2025, the three most significant ISO standardized subsets of PDF – PDF/A, PDF/X, and PDF/UA – … Read more
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