Download the Presentations
What an incredible two days! The Khronos Group’s inaugural Shading Languages Symposium (February 12–13, 2026, in San Diego) brought together shader programmers, researchers, technical artists, language implementors, and industry leaders to explore the past, present, and future of shading languages—from GLSL and SPIR-V to Slang, WGSL, HLSL, and OSL, while touching on emerging trends like neural graphics and real-time rendering innovations.
Co-located right after Vulkanised 2026, the event created a perfect week of deep graphics discussions, and LunarG was honored to play a prominent role with three key contributions:
- Opening Keynote: GLSL: Origins, Observations, and Opportunities – Delivered by Randi Rost (LunarG/ Randi Rost Consulting). Randi reflected on the origins of the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL), it’s impact on the graphics industry, and the future of interactive 3D visualization.
- The glslang Compiler: The Present and Future -Arcady Goldmints-Orlov (LunarG) shared updates on LunarG’s ongoing maintenance of glslang, the reference GLSL compiler for Vulkan. Highlights included recent improvements like a stable public API/ABI for easier shared-library integration, enhanced debug information, and a preview of potential new GLSL extensions.
- Instrumenting SPIR-V for GPU ValidationSpencer Fricke (LunarG) dove into the challenges and solutions for instrumenting SPIR-V in GPU-Assisted Validation (GPU-AV), focusing on efficient parsing and reassembly of valid SPIR-V to enable fast, reliable validation in the Vulkan Validation Layers.
The energy in the room was fantastic—great conversations, insightful questions, and valuable feedback that will help shape our ongoing work on tools, validation, and shader ecosystems.
A huge thank you to the Khronos team for organizing this landmark event, to all the speakers and attendees for the thoughtful discussions, and to the broader Vulkan and shading community for your continued collaboration.
We’ve made the slides from our presenters available for download so you can revisit the talks or share them with your teams:
- GLSL: Origins, Observations, and Opportunities (Randi Rost) – PDF Download
- The glslang Compiler: The Present and Future (Arcady Goldmints-Orlov) – PDF Download
- Instrumenting SPIR-V for GPU Validation (Spencer Fricke) – PDF Download
If you couldn’t attend or want to dive deeper into any of these topics, reach out—we’re always happy to chat about GLSL, SPIR-V instrumentation, Vulkan Validation Layers, or how these advancements can support your projects.
Thanks again to everyone who made SLS 2026 such a success. Here’s to continued innovation in shading languages and real-time graphics!
