How AgentCore Gateway supports the MCP 2026-07-28 spec

Today, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) published its 2026-07-28 specification, the largest and most significant revision of the protocol since its launch.

What happened

Today, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) published its 2026-07-28 specification, the largest and most significant revision of the protocol since its launch. With this release MCP becomes a stateless protocol that scales on ordinary HTTP infrastructure. Alongside the transport changes, this new version introduces a governed extensions system, strengthens authorization by aligning more closely with enterprise practices for OAuth 2. 0 and OpenID Connect, and establishes lifecycle guarantees that limit future breakage.

Practical impact for readers

You can start using the latest protocol on your AgentCore Gateway , a capability of Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, today by calling UpdateGateway with the list of versions you want your gateway to support. Existing clients keep working exactly as before, and there is no per-target step. In this post, we walk through what changed in the protocol and why, what it means for your agents and tools, and how to enable the new version on your gateways.

Details worth verifying

Already familiar with the spec changes? Jump straight to Updating your AgentCore Gateway . The people who feel the value first are often operators, editors, creators, and teams stitching multiple apps into one daily workflow. After the first update lands, the follow-up worth watching is rollout speed, stability, and whether the useful parts stay locked behind paid tiers.

Who should act or wait

This release contains backward-incompatible changes to the MCP protocol. The transition to statelessness is a foundational change that protocol maintainers believe is necessary to address scaling challenges with enterprise deployments. The introduction of breaking changes with new versions, however, is not expected to be the norm. To help facilitate backward-compatible updates in future revisions, maintainers have introduced new governance enhancements to the protocol specification (a feature lifecycle policy, an extensions framework, and a conformance-suite requirement). These enhancements are designed to support protocol evolution without breaking core capabilities.

What is still unclear

Upgrading is also opt-in , and nothing changes until both you and your clients act. AgentCore Gateway advertises the protocol versions it speaks through a single configuration field. Clients select a version on every request. Adding 2026-07-28 to a gateway that also advertises 2025-11-25 does not change anything for clients that request the older version. Only a client that requests 2026-07-28 gets the new behavior. Nothing breaks on July 28.

Source notes

AWS ML Blog