- From: W3C Community Development Team <team-community-process@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:04:53 +0000
- To: public-design-tokens@w3.org
Open standard enables seamless interoperability between design tools. San Francisco, CA – October 28, 2025 – The Design Tokens Community Group today announced the first stable version of the Design Tokens Specification (2025.10), marking a milestone for design systems teams and tool makers worldwide. After years of collaborative development, the specification provides a production-ready, vendor-neutral format for sharing design decisions across tools and platforms. Design tokens: the single source of truth for colors, typography, spacing, and other design decisions – have long been fragmented across proprietary formats. Teams maintaining multi-brand design systems often juggle dozens or even hundreds of token files manually, leading to drift, errors, and maintenance overhead. The new stable specification addresses this through standardized support for theming, modern color spaces, and cross-tool interoperability. “The specification unlocks interoperability across design tools and code,” said Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent, co-chair of the Design Tokens Community Group. “Design systems teams can now maintain one source of truth that works everywhere – from design to production code across iOS, Android, and web.” What’s new in 2025.10 The stable specification introduces critical capabilities for scaling design systems: Theming and multi-brand support – manage light/dark modes, accessibility variants, and brand themes without file duplication Modern color specification – full support for Display P3, Oklch, and all CSS Color Module 4 spaces, matching how design tools actually work Rich token relationships – inheritance, aliases, and component-level references for sophisticated design systems Cross-platform consistency – one token file generates platform-specific code for iOS, Android, web, and Flutter “A stable design token specification is an essential, open foundation for sharing design across teams, tools, and frameworks,” said Nathan Curtis, design systems expert and industry consultant. “With this new standardized way of working, based on years of battle-tested iterations written by the design systems community, for the community… we are bridging the gap between design and development. I can't wait to see the ripple effect of the official Design Tokens Specification release!” said Samantha Gordashko, consultant Design Tokens Architect. Production-ready ecosystem The specification’s stability is backed by reference implementations in leading tools including Style Dictionary, Tokens Studio, and Terrazzo. More than 10 design tools and open-source projects – including Penpot, Figma, Sketch, Framer, Knapsack, Supernova, and zeroheight – already support or are implementing the standard. “The DTCG spec v1 gives the industry a stable foundation,” said Mike Kamminga from Tokens Studio. “By solving multi-file support, theming, and including advanced color support, it unlocks an agnostic design systems and tooling ecosystem.” The specification was developed by more than 20 editors and authors, with dozens more contributors participating through GitHub issues and community discussions. Organizations represented include Adobe, Amazon, Google, Baidu, Sony, Microsoft, Meta, Sketch, Salesforce, Shopify, Figma, Framer, Cisco, Intuit, New York Times, GM, Disney, Anima, Pinterest, Tokens Studio, Penpot, Knapsack, Supernova, zeroheight, and many others. Built in the open Developed by the Design Tokens Community Group, the specification reflects real-world use cases from design systems teams at companies of all sizes. The open standard ensures no single vendor controls the format, giving teams freedom to choose the best tools without compatibility concerns. “The arrival of the first stable version of the Design Tokens spec is a huge achievement for what it unlocks.”, said Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, CEO of Penpot, “It means tools can become platforms and platforms can become interoperable. It's a much needed breath of fresh air for the Design ecosystem.” Get started For design systems teams: Start exporting tokens in the stable format and provide feedback in the GitHub issues: https://github.com/design-tokens/community-group/issues. For tool makers: Implement the specification to tap into an ecosystem of interoperable design tools. Full documentation, examples, and implementation guidance are available at designtokens.org. Resources: Full specification: https://www.designtokens.org/tr/2025.10/ Become a participant: https://www.w3.org/community/design-tokens/participants Join the discussion on GitHub: https://github.com/design-tokens/community-group About the Design Tokens Community Group The Design Tokens Community Group is a W3C Community Group bringing together designers, developers, and tool makers to standardize how design tokens are defined and exchanged. The group operates through open collaboration and transparent development on GitHub. Membership is open to all. Press & media inquiries: kaelig@deloumeau.fr ---------- This post sent on Design Tokens Community Group 'Design Tokens specification reaches first stable version' https://www.w3.org/community/design-tokens/2025/10/28/design-tokens-specification-reaches-first-stable-version/ Learn more about the Design Tokens Community Group: https://www.w3.org/community/design-tokens
Received on Tuesday, 28 October 2025 17:04:53 UTC