NumFOCUS

We have a new round of project updates to kick off the new year! Check out the updates on the NumFOCUS blog at hubs.la/Q040Wf_l0. This month features updates from:
pandas
ITK
geopandas
@julialang.org
@cupy.bsky.social
@ropensci.org
@projectpythia.bsky.social
@optuna.bsky.social
Taskflow

Version 4.9 of MFEM was just released on December 11, 2025! Highlights of this release include ∂FEM: a new MFEM capability for Automatic Differentiation (AD) of nonlinear finite element operators, and much more. All changes can be found here: github.com/orgs/mfem/di...

We are happy to announce the first release candidate of pandas 3.0.0 was released! You can find the the list of changes in 3.0.0 in the release notes page here: pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/wha...

December was an exciting month for rOpenSci! They proudly continued supporting LatinR as a community partner in 2025, and their community manager, Yani, was recently interviewed on our new NumFOCUS podcast, Give Me 5! You can watch the 5-minute episode now: youtu.be/SqafLv6CYPI?...

skforecast 0.19.0 has just been released! This release expands skforecast into new types of forecasting problems, strengthens drift detection, & introduces a dedicated statistical modeling module fully aligned with the scikit-learn interface. Get the full details here: skforecast.org/0.19.0/relea...

rOpenSci published a blog post requesting feedback for a prototype of an organization-level dashboard for tracking the health and maintenance of an organization’s R packages. They’re still looking for feedback and suggestions, so please read and help out with your ideas! ropensci.org/blog/2025/09...

Optuna released v4.6! This version delivers significant enhancements to both user experience and optimization power. Key highlights include an interactive, LLM-powered interface for Optuna Dashboard, enabling users to filter trials and generate graphs w/ natural language. medium.com/optuna/annou...

Python-Blosc2 3.11.1 is here! After three months of intense work, they’ve unleashed a release that represents a massive leap forward in their support for the Array API standard. Blosc is achieving unprecedented performance!

Get the full story on Blosc’s blog: www.blosc.org/posts/tensor...

Introducing NumFOCUS’s newest Affiliated project, BrainGlobe! brainglobe.info

BrainGlobe is a project to build interoperable tools for the analysis and visualization of neuroscience histology data. It includes ten user-facing data processing packages. Welcome to the NumFOCUS family!

Please welcome our newest Sponsored project, OpenProblems.bio! 💙 openproblems.bio

OpenProblems.bio is a community-driven project aiming to identify and benchmark computational methods for analyzing single-cell data, with a goal to accelerate progress in single-cell research. Welcome to NumFOCUS!

Open-source thrives because people show up. Today, on Giving Tuesday, we’re calling on our whole community — developers, scientists, students, organizers, and supporters. Let’s push this campaign into maximum overdrive. Donate to support open science at numfocus.org/max-the-stack

Giving Tuesday is here — time to Max the Stack. Let’s sustain the tools powering global discovery. Donate today at numfocus.org/max-the-stack #NumFOCUS #MaxTheStack

It’s been an exciting month for us and our projects yet again! Check out our roundup of November Project Updates, including two brand new NumFOCUS projects! numfocus.medium.com/34ec15fef155

A huge thank-you to @blockscience.bsky.social for their support of NumFOCUS and PyData.Their commitment to rigorous research and community-driven innovation strengthens every part of the ecosystem. Join in their support of open source scientific computing: Donate to NumFOCUS at hubs.la/Q03VFBdL0

Optuna v4.6 is scheduled for release next month! It will include full support for multi-objective and constrained optimization in AutoSampler, automatic plot generation using LLM in Optuna-Dashboard, and more.

We are happy to announce the release of Colour — CxF! This extension package for Colour implements reading and writing files in the Color Exchange Format (CxF) to store and exchange color data across different systems. Read the full announcement here: www.colour-science.org/posts/suppor...

Skforecast 0.18.0 is here! 🎉 This release brings backtesting with more control, drift detection for production, better visualization and insights, and much more to make your forecasting pipelines more reliable, interpretable, and production-ready!

Full release notes: skforecast.org/0.18.0/relea...

rOpenSci recently hosted another Coworking session, this time focusing on the theme “Code Review with rOpenSci” with community host Liz Hare, rOpenSci Champion and Software Reviewer. Tune into their next session, “Getting to know The Carpentries” on Dec. 2! ropensci.org/events/cowor...

Explore the Redesigned Learn.Astropy.org A New Way to Learn Astronomy with Python

Exciting news from @astropy.org! The redesigned Learn.Astropy.org is live! Explore tutorials blending Python + astronomy — from FITS files to orbit simulations. Learn more on the NumFOCUS blog at bit.ly/48hlBNI

ICYMI: Julia version 1.12 has been released! julialang.org/blog/2025/10...

We want to thank all the contributors to this release and all the testers who helped find regressions and issues in the pre-releases. Without you, this release would not have been possible! 💜

Announcing C-Blosc2 2.21.2: A fast, compressed and persistent binary data store library for C! This is a maintenance release, with a few fixes and some optimizations. Check out the full release notes here: github.com/Blosc/c-blos...

Donate to Blosc: numfocus.org/donate-to-bl...

💙 pyMOR just released pyMOR 2025.1! This release introduces a major breaking change in pyMOR’s VectorArray API, along with a few new features. Check them out here: bit.ly/42LU7gh

Recently, rOpenSci held some fabulous community sessions on new ways to publish R packages and how to ship your R package to the R-multiverse! Stay up to date on their next events here: ropensci.org/events/ 💯

Donate to rOpenSci: numfocus.org/donate-to-ro...

On behalf of the Spyder Project Contributors, we’re pleased to announce that Spyder 6.0.8 has been released and is available for Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS X! 🕷️

This release fixed input method positioning for the Editor and IPython Console.

Donate to Spyder: numfocus.org/donate-for-s...

Optuna has released CARBOSampler, a sampler for robust Bayesian optimization, and the C-DTLZ constrained multi-objective optimization benchmark set packages on OptunaHub. They are also working on Optuna-Dashboard LLM integration functionalities that manipulate data with natural language. Good luck!😍

On behalf of the NumPy team, we’re pleased to announce the release of NumPy 2.3.3. The NumPy 2.3.3 release is a patch release split between a number of maintenance updates and bug fixes. This release supports Python 3.11–3.14. 🩵

A Zarr Summit is currently being hosted in Rome, Oct. 13-17, 2025! Zarr currently has over 60 registrants representing 50+ organizations, 5+ continents, and Zarr usage across Python, R, C++, Rust, APIs, GUIs, and more! 🤩🐍🔬

Mesa had an exceptional Google Summer of Code (GSoC)! With its completion, they have three exciting improvements to Mesa: Mesa Frames 0.2, Mesa-LLM, & Mesa 3.3,

This is incredible, congrats Mesa!

The 4th Dynare Workshop for Advanced Users took place from Sep. 17-19, 2025, at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy.

The Dynare Team showcased their latest software developments alongside participants from policy institutions and academia. Congrats, Dynare! 💙

Julia version 1.11.7, the seventh patch release in the 1.11 series, is now available! As a patch release, 1.11.7 contains no new features or breaking changes, only bug fixes, documentation improvements, and performance improvements. 🙏