(Fwd) VOTE by 2026-02-27: Proposed recharter for the Verifiable Credentials Working Group

Dear members of the Verifiable Credentials Working Group,

For your information:

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:  VOTE by 2026-02-27: Proposed recharter for the Verifiable 
Credentials Working Group
Date:  Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:17:00 +0800
From:  Xueyuan Jia <xueyuan@w3.org>
To:  w3c-ac-members@w3.org


Dear Advisory Committee Representative,
[This announcement will be forwarded to W3C group chairs]

This is a Call for Review of a proposed recharter for the Verifiable 
Credentials Working Group:
https://www.w3.org/2026/02/proposed-vc-wg-charter.html

Please review the charter and indicate your support using this online form:
https://www.w3.org/wbs/33280/proposed-vc-wg-charter-26/

The deadline for responses is 23:59 UTC on 27 February 2026 [1].

The mission of the Verifiable Credentials Working Group is to support 
the verifiable credentials ecosystem by maintaining existing 
specifications and adding new functionalities that supports desired 
ecosystem use cases.

The core Verifiable Credentials Recommendations (including VC Data 
Model, Data Integrity, ECDSA and EdDSA Cryptosuites, VC using JOSE-COSE, 
Bitstring Status List, and Controlled Identifiers) will be maintained. 
The BBS Cryptosuite and VC JSON Schema Candidate Recommendations will be 
finalized if circumstances allow it. New Recommendations will also be 
published: VC Render Method, VC Confidence, API for Lifecycle 
Management, VC Barcodes, Verifiable Issuers and Verifiers.

The proposed Team resource for this group remains at 0.2 FTE.

The Advisory Committee Representatives of current participants will need 
to have their organizations re-join the group if the revised charter 
gets approved.

The horizontal review of the charter is available as a Strategy Github 
repository issue:
https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/536

A disposition of comments on the draft charter is available at:
https://github.com/w3c/vc-charter-2026/issues?q=is%3Aissue
https://github.com/w3c/vc-charter-2026/pulls?q=is%3Apr+

To see all changes relative to the current charter, follow this link:
https://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2024%2F10%2Fvc-wg-charter.html&doc2=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2026%2F02%2Fproposed-vc-wg-charter.html

More information about the group can be found on its home page [2], 
including information about group Chairs, Staff Contact, and 
instructions for joining the group.

If you have any questions or need further information, please contact 
Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>, Staff Contact for the Verifiable Credentials 
Working Group.

This charter review follows section 4.4 of the W3C Process Document:
https://www.w3.org/policies/process/20250818/#CharterReview

Thank you,

For Philippe le Hégaret, VP, Technical Strategy,
Ivan Herman, Staff Contact for the Verifiable Credentials Working Group;
Xueyuan Jia, Manager, Member Communications

[1] 
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20260227T2359&p1=1440
[2] https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/vc/