The PDF Association in 2025 – a recap

Just in case you missed it, here we recap many of the year's public developments at the PDF Association and its associated ISO subcommittee, ISO TC 171 SC 2. If you are hungry for statistics about pdf errata in 2025 you can skip to the bottom!

January

• The PDF Accessibility LWG (finally!) published its first set of techniques for accessible PDF.
• The PDF Association launched its formal listing of tools that expose the relationship between content and tags.
• PDF Association CTO Peter Wyatt offered guidance on UX for an incredibly powerful PDF feature: PDF collections and reported on the smallest possible PDF.
• PDF in the Wild for January 2025: Yes, you too can play Doom in a PDF.

February

• The PDF Accessibility Marketing Working Group (MWG) held a very well-attended webinar to introduce the new techniques launched in January. Watch the recording.
• The EA-PDF Liaison Working Group (LWG) announced the publication of the EA-PDF specification for archiving email using PDF technology.
• Peter Wyatt reported that Google’s Jpegli works in PDF.
• The PDF Association posted free XMP extension schema templates to support PDF documents that conform to multiple subset standards, including PDF/A, PDF/X, PDF/VT, and PDF Declarations.
• The PDF Association launched the Cryptography and Provenance TWG, replacing the PDF Digital Signatures TWG with a new, broader scope.
• PDF in the Wild for February 2025: Is PDF bookmark creation finally coming to Chrome?

March

• We announced progress on Brotli compression in PDF.
• The Accessibility LWG announced its techniques for headings.
• The TWAIN Working Group discussed the value PDF/R offers to ISVs.
• PDF in the Wild for March 2025: When will AI understand document semantics?

April

• PDF’s technical leaders met in Concord (near Boston) for PDF Week Boston 2025 to discuss a diverse range of topics, from accessibility to 3D PDF. Of course, our established morning walks took place as well!
• CEO Duff Johnson wrote about accessibility roles and responsibilities.
• The PDF Accessibility LWG released its 2nd tranche of techniques covering headings.
• PDF in the Wild for April 2025: AI pirates.

May

• We held another webinar to discuss the latest batch of techniques for headings.
• We dramatically expanded our use of GitHub, and now operate 51 repos on behalf of our Technical and Liaison Working Groups! 14 of these repos are public.
• PDF in the Wild for May 2025: News and views.

June

• We published industry guidance on conforming to both PDF/A and PDF/UA in the same PDF.
• Patrick Gallot wrote an article on understanding Brotli compression in PDF.
• We recognized International Archives Week 2025.
• Patrick wrote another article on blocking AI from scraping data from PDFs.
• PDF in the Wild for June 2025: All top word processors default to tagged PDF.

July

• We released a new Application Note, FAQ on HDR in PDF, that focuses on the impact of HDR data on applications supporting PDF/A and PDF/X.
• Peter wrote an article on how Google’s PDF preview fails, including with PDFs made by Google Docs!
• Paul Rayius wrote an article on tagging Images in PDF/UA-1 and PDF/UA-2.
• We offered 5 reasons to attend PDF Days Europe 2025
• PDF in the Wild for July 2025: Browsers battle over PDF capabilities.

August

• We introduced the PDF Research Portal, a new initiative designed to support and encourage all-of-industry relevant research into PDF, and its broader role in modern economies.
• Jacob Mellor wrote an article on designing PDFs for pattern-based reading.
• PDF in the Wild for August 2025: Two languages in one Alt? Try THAT with HTML!

September

• PDF Days Europe 2025 in Berlin was a blast! Watch the presentations via our presentation archive. Attendees enjoyed the talks, discussions and networking opportunities, especially during the poster sessions. All posters are available for download!
• Peter's poster marking the Milestones in the History of PDF visualized over thirty years of innovation and standardization - it was a big hit!
• Also in Berlin for PDF Days, CTO Peter Wyatt led a two day workshop for software developers.
• ISO TC 171 SC 2 approved ISO 32000-2:2020 AMD 1 for publication.
• A big thank you to our sponsors, who make ISO standards for PDF available at no cost!
• Peter wrote an article on future-proofing XMP identification schema.
• PDF in the Wild for September 2025: PDF 2.0 support gets top billing in coverage of LibreOffice 25.8

October

• We published a new Application Note: Including Custom Metadata Structures in PDF.
• Thomas Zellmann was named the PDF Champion for 2025!
• Daniel Wilson wrote an article on how the PDF Industry embraces post-quantum cryptography to secure digital signatures.
• PDF in the Wild for October 2025: Milestones in the History of PDF.

November

• We celebrated the 20th Anniversary of PDF/A-1!
• The PDF Accessibility LWG released its 3rd tranche of techniques covering lists.
• Peter wrote an article on PDF/A and external references.
• TC 171 SC 2 moved ISO 19005-4 (PDF/A-4) to Draft International Standard (DIS) status.
• We noted a major new initiative to translate PDF 2.0 into Chinese.
• PDF in the Wild for November 2025: Browsers leverage PDF in their battle for dominance.

December

• We launched the PDF Association Merch shop and published a short video about PDF Days
• Anne Lazarakis wrote an article on selling HTML to PDF C# libraries
• Peter wrote an article on (re)aligning PDF/A and PDF/X.
• ISO TC 171 SC 2 reconfirmed ISO 23504-1 (PDF/R) and ISO /TS 32001.
• Duff wrote an article on PDF trends in 2025, according to AI.
• Peter wrote an article analyzing the Epstein PDFs released by the US Department of Justice
• PDF in the Wild for December: PDF errata makeover.

Progress on PDF issues resolution

The PDF Association maintains pdf-issues, a public GitHub repo that allows developers and stakeholders worldwide to identify errors, suggest clarifications, request new features, and more!

In 2025 (so far!), 195 new errata were reported to this repo, and 137 errata were closed (also so far!).

Thank you to the experts who contributed to the pdf-issues repo during 2025!